UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
FACULTY OF DIVINITY
CENTRE FOR ADVANCED RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
Currents in World Christianity
Incorporating
North Atlantic Missiology Project
Position Paper Number 59
Forging an Ideology for American
Missions:
Josiah Strong and Manifest Destiny
Wendy Deichmann Edwards
The material contained in this paper is copyrighted to Wendy Deichmann Edwards and
may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the
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Wendy Deichmann Edwards
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USA
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Email: bs217@cam.ac.uk
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards and the North Atlantic Missiology Project
2
Forging an Ideology for American Missions: Josiah Strong and Manifest Destiny
Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards, Ph.D
It was Josiah Strong's 1885 manifesto for home missions, Our Country, that
propelled him into national prominence as a writer, religious reformer, missions advocate
and unabashed nationalist.1 Aaron Abell used the word "electrify" to describe its effect
upon "the religious forces of the nation." It has been deemed "a religious version of
manifest destiny," and "perhaps the most important single stimulus to …evangelical
imperialism …in the final decade of the nineteenth century."2 It was a book that inspired
its readers both to believe and to act. It resulted in a widespread renewal of commitment
to support and promote American mission work, both home and abroad.
It was in Our Country that Strong first committed to print his view that "it is fully
in the hands of the Christians of the United States, during the next ten or fifteen years, to
hasten or retard the coming of Christ's kingdom in the world by hundreds, and perhaps
thousands of years. We of this generation and nation occupy the Gibraltar of the ages
which commands the world's future." Austin Phelps restated this conviction in his
introduction to the 1891 edition: "As goes America, so goes the world, in all that is vital
to its moral welfare." He added, "The future of Christianity, "depends upon "the future of
1
The book quickly reached bestseller status, selling more than 175,000 copies in
English. Our Country was also translated into German and Dutch. Richard Hofstadter,
Social Darwinism in American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), pp. 107, 178.
2
Aaron Ignatius Abell, The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865-1900
(Harnden and London: Archon Books, 1962), p. 90. Anders Stephanson, Manifest
Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (New York: Hill and Wang,
1995), p. 79. "Strong's philosophy," wrote historian E. Berkeley Tompkins, ''as evinced
by this work, was a potpourri of evangelical Protestantism, vigorous nationalism, Social
Darwinism, intense racialism, and American expansionism." E. Berkeley Tompkins, AntiImperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890-1920 (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1970), pp.10-11.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
3
this country," for the “United States [is] first and foremost the chosen seat of enterprise
for the world's conversion.”3
Significantly, the main message of Strong's Our Country was not new. Even
though his name has been indelibly linked with the title since 1885, Strong was not
responsible for either the title or the basic argument of this bestseller. Strong's work was
actually a revision of the American Home Missionary Society's official but outdated
handbook, Our Country. Number Two. A Plea for Home Missions. The last edition of this
handbook had appeared in 1858. It had resulted from a reworking of the original, 1842
tract: Our Country. Its Capabilities, Its Perils, and Its Hope: Being a Plea for the Early
Establishment of Gospel Institutions in the Destitute Portions of the United States.
Understandably, by virtue of his having rewritten, reasserted and contributed to its
contents in his own words and style, Strong was practically ascribed ownership of Our
Country and its message when it appeared in its final form.
The book's major themes of religious crisis, Christian responsibility and national
destiny were already representative of American Congregationalist thought during the
period when its first two versions were written. The title was never so popular though,
until Strong added to the traditional, evangelical home missionary impulse of his native
Congregationalism an updated religious version of "manifest destiny" and some of the
currents and implications of social Darwinism. The result was so attractive and
convincing to mainline Protestant readers, that his version of Our Country became one of
the most popular, cutting-edge expressions of American mission ideology in the last two
decades of the nineteenth century.
3
Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis. Revised
edition. (New York: Baker & Taylor, 1891), p. 180. Austin Phelps quoted in Josiah
Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, revised ed. (New York:
Baker & Taylor, 1891), p. 14.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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Puritanism, Evangelical Congregationalism and "Manifest Destiny"
In order to appreciate the basic thrust of the mission ideology expressed in Our
Country, one must first gain a clear understanding of the historical and religious
perspectives from which it was written and then revised. The most significant influences
include the Puritan concept of covenant theology and its role in colonial New England;
the Protestant millennial theme of a Christian America and how it functioned as a catalyst
first to religious establishment, then to revivalism, voluntarism and social reform; and
finally the notion of “manifest destiny,” as it was employed with both political and
religious meaning in the United States during the nineteenth century.
In 1630, in his famous sermon aboard the Arabella, Puritan leader John Winthrop
described New England as a divinely sanctioned experiment: "a city set upon a hill" for
all the world to see. As Congregational historian John von Rohr put it, Winthrop was not
only referring to “the church covenant and the congregation of the elect ….His vision was
upon the holy commonwealth in its total political breadth and upon the national covenant
in which it was engaged with God.”4 As heirs of the doctrine of divine election, the
Puritans who migrated to New England saw themselves as particularly set apart or chosen
to fulfill the biblical vision of the New Israel. As adherents to covenant theology, they
believed that the fulfillment of God's promises was conditional, that it depended upon
their faithfulness in obeying the divine directives. England had rejected its God-given
opportunity to serve as a covenant nation by "impeding the continuation of [puritan]
reformation through hostility and persecution." Therefore God had provided a new
opportunity for the creation of a holy commonwealth in North America, composed of the
"faithful remnant," whose present opportunity it was to "demonstrate to England and to
all the world the purity of life in church and society to which they were called."5 This idea
of a holy commonwealth was made visible by the "establishment" of Puritanism in
4
John von Rohr, The Shaping of American Congregationalism, 1620-1957
(Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1992), pp. 59, 111.
5
von Rohr, American Congregationalism, pp. 112-13.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
5
Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut. It was further expressed in the
definition of Puritan theology and polity in the Cambridge Platform of 1648 and the
Saybrook Articles in 1708. 6
Puritan "declension" was lamented in innumerable preached and published
jeremiads throughout the early period of establishment. This "decline of 'experimental'
piety" was seemingly embodied in the Half-Way Covenant of 1662,7 but somewhat
reversed by the Great Awakening of the 1730s. The evangelizing work of the "Grand
Itinerants" as well as "the intensified extension of the preaching and pastoral labors of the
regular New England ministers" had a renewing effect upon "the ideal of a regenerate
[church] membership"8 Thereby hope was restored in the mission of New England.
Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards led the way in reasserting the promise of the divine
plan:
America has received the true religion of the old continent; the
church of ancient times had been there, and Christ is from thence: but that
there may be an equality, and inasmuch as that continent has crucified
Christ, they shall not have the honor of communicating religion in its most
glorious state to us, but we to them ….When God is about to turn the earth
into a Paradise, he does not begin his work where there is some good
growth already, but in a wilderness, where nothing grows, and nothing is
6
Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical
Realities, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 11-12. The Cambridge
Platform defined Puritan polity in Massachusetts as strictly Congregational, opposed
religious toleration, affirmed the theology of the Westminster Assembly, and empowered
the magistrates to enforce uniformity over against "heresy, disobedience and schism." The
Saybrook Platform placed the colony of Connecticut "firmly in the Westminster
theological tradition," and instituted a "semipresbyterian" church structure. Sydney
Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1972), pp. 155-6, 163.
7
Ahlstrom, Religious History, pp. 158-62, 280.
8
Ibid., pp. 283-7.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
6
to be seen but dry sand and barren rocks; that the light may shine out of
darkness, and the world be replenished from emptiness.9
Religious dissent and Enlightenment philosophy were to become the most serious
factors in undermining religious establishment in the colonies, and establishment finally
gave way to religious freedom. By the time this gradual transition was complete, the
Puritan millennial vision and its implications for the "new world" had become solidly
fused to the Protestant evangelical ethos. The Revolutionary War and independence made
it clearer than ever to "the citizens of the new republic that a headstrong and heedless
England had forfeited her place in God's plan for the nations." It became "the general
conviction" that through "providential control of events, God had fashioned the United
States as a new instrument" to accomplish the divine plan for humankind.10 This
conviction was expressed in verse by the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, Timothy
Dwight, in his 1785 Conquest of Canaan:
Hence o’ er all lands shall sacred influency spread,
Warm frozen climes, and cheer the death-like shade; To nature's bounds,
reviving Freedom reign,
And truth, and Virtue, light the world again.11
The idea of a Christian America as earlier held by the Puritans and some other
groups remained intact, but the accepted method of achieving it had changed. Instead of
creating the divine, earthly domain through the "laws and public monies" of
establishments of religion, it was to be won "wholly by methods of persuasion."12 The
new, voluntary methods would have both religious and political expressions.
9
Jonathan Edwards, "Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England,"
quoted in Handy, Christian America, p. 19.
10
Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America: An Historical Account of the
Development of American Religious Life, 4th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing
Company, 1987), p. 109. Von Rohr, American Congregationalism, p. 245.
11
Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968; Midway repr., 1980), p. 108.
12
Handy, Christian America, p. 3.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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Revivalism, which is credited with fueling the First Great Awakening, was also
“the most powerful force in nineteenth-century Protestant life.” 13 With its tendency to
emphasize the importance of human choice in responding to God's call, and its
widespread appeal and impact, it was an effective medium of large-scale religious
persuasion.14 Combined with the perfectionism that flourished in the first half of the
century, it aroused the churches “‘ as never before’ …t o the belief that ‘ a glorious advent
of the kingdom of God’ was near at hand.” 15
The building of the millennial kingdom involved not only the preaching of "the
gospel to every creature," but also the reorganization of “human society in accordance
with the law of God.”16 Much of this work was to be accomplished by religious voluntary
societies, whose missions, education and social reform emphases "were hastening the day
when the whole earth would be filled with his glory and 'all nations walk in the light of
eternal truth and love."'17 The voluntary societies "reached out beyond denominational
divisions to pool broader Protestant efforts to meet particular needs." This was the context
for the formation of many foreign and home missionary organizations, including the
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1812, and the American
Home Missionary Society in 1826. Both of these groups were interdenominational at the
13
Ibid., pp. 25-6. See also Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform:
American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1957;
repr., Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1976), pp. 45-62.
14
Handy, Christian America, pp. 25-6. Ahlstrom, Religious History, p. 844.
Anderson discusses the importance of choice and the apocalyptic theme of crisis in
Puritan and revivalist preaching in Manifest Destiny, pp. 7-8. William G. McLoughlin
explains the theological aspects of the transition to moral suasion, Arminian
evangelicalism and revival techniques in The American Evangelicals, 1800-1900, An
Anthology (New York: Harper & Row, 1968; repro , Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith,
1976), p. 10. In Congregationalism, the leading revivalists included Timothy Dwight,
Asahel Nettleton, Lyman Beecher and Charles Finney. Von Rohr, American
Congregationalism, pp. 255-6.
15
Smith quoting Edward Beecher, 1835, in Revivalism and Social Reform, p. 225.
16
Ibid., p. 225.
17
Smith quoting Philip Schaff, 1855, in Ibid., p. 227.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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outset, but later, with the withdrawal of other denominations, became Congregationalist.18
It was the latter of these two organizations that sponsored the Our Country series.
Politically, the nineteenth century witnessed a growing inclination toward
westward expansion and American nationalism. The phrase "manifest destiny" was
reportedly coined by John O'Sullivan in 1845 to signify the mission of the United States
“to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly
multiplying millions.”19 Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of New
Mexico and Texas, and the removal of Indians had resulted in "the need to understand and
legitimate, or understand and oppose, aggressive annexation of territory." American
nationalism and, in particular, the religiously sanctioned idea of “manifest destiny”
emerged "forcefully" in this context.20 O'Sullivan, who had founded the Review in 1837
to give voice to Jacksonian principles, exemplified and promoted these views:
The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American
greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many
nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine
principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the
worship of the Most High – the Sacred and the True.
For this blessed mission to the nations of the world, which are shut
out from the life- giving light of truth, has America been chosen; and her
high example shall smite unto death the tyranny of kings, hierarchs, and
oligarchs, and carry the glad tidings of peace and good will where myriads
18
The ABCFM became "exclusively Congregational" in 1870, and the AHMS
"predominantly Congregational" in 1860. Von Rohr, American Congregationalism,
pp.258-60.
19
Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, xi.
20
Ibid., pp. 28-32. See also Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, p. 125. In chapter 4, titled
"When Did Destiny Become Manifest?" Tuveson wrote, "What happened was that the
possibilities for territorial expansion in the years just after the Texan revolt came into a
kind of chemical combination with the general Protestant theology of the millennium, and
with the already old idea of the destined greatness and messianic mission of “Columbia.”
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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now endure an existence scarcely more enviable than that of beasts of the
field.21
For O'Sullivan, democracy, Christianity and the cause of humanity were synonymous.
Nothing could easily or justifiably stand in the way of their collective progress.
By mid-century, it was becoming clear to many northern and western United
States citizens that the huge "blot of slavery" was indeed standing in the way of true
Christian and democratic process. Although southerners invoked the traditional "themes
of the right to rebellion, independence and liberty…t he course of the war soon allowed
the victorious North to regain its destinarian footing."22 The war against slavery was
believed to be the final Armageddon. The tremendous sacrifice it required was imbued
with religious significance, and its end signified divine vindication, from the Unionist
perspective.23 In the final analysis, the war had a revitalizing effect on the nation's
confidence in its mission. Finally purged of the evil institution of slavery, the floodgates
of resistance to the spread of "true" democracy and "pure" Christianity, with the requisite
moral reform in the South and Southwest were opened. The approach of the SpanishAmerican War in 1898 would once again focus attention upon issues related to external
expansion. In the meantime, the period following the conclusion of the Civil War was a
time when United States "expansion" would consist of preoccupation with settling,
developing and reforming newly acquired and emancipated domains upon democratic and
Christian principles.24 This is the historical context in which Josiah Strong began his
career in the Congregationalist ministry, and in which he was invited to revise Our
Country.
The post-Civil War period was one of growth for Protestant home missionary
concerns in the United States, as denominations began to refocus attention on the needs of
21
John O'Sullivan quoted in Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, pp. 39-40.
Ibid., p. 65.
23
lbid., chap. 7, "The Ennobling War," pp. 187-214.
24
Ibid., pp. 65-7.
22
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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the South, the West and the cities.25 Because its churches had found themselves
"substantially united in support of the triumphant cause," the sense of "the continental
mission of Congregationalism" had been affirmed and "strengthened by the war of the
rebellion." This growing sense of mission was expressed in 1865 by "a representative
Convention wherein the churches might deliberate as to the best methods of improving
the opportunities of the hour." It resulted in a new statement of faith and mission adopted
by the Congregational churches. 26 This document, which came to be called the Burial Hill
Declaration, conveyed to the world the spirit of a denomination reaffirming its
understanding of its historical identity, heritage and significance. Echoing themes
inherited directly from Puritanism, it restated its perception of itself as uniquely
commissioned and sent forth into a mission field that was both spiritual and temporal,
with a gospel that was to be personally, socially and politically applied:
It was the grand peculiarity of our Puritan Fathers, that they held
this gospel, not merely as the ground of their personal salvation, but as
declaring the worth of man by the incarnation and sacrifice of the Son of
God; and therefore applied its principles to elevate society, to regulate
education, to civilize humanity, to purify law, to reform the Church and
State, and to assert and defend liberty; in short, to mould and redeem, by
its all-transforming energy, everything that belongs to man in his
individual and social relations. 27
Just like that of the earlier New England commonwealth, the scope of the mission was
understood to be both national and global:
In the times that are before us as a nation …we rest all our hope in
the gospel of the Son of God …It was the faith of our fathers that gave us
this free land in which we dwell. It is by this faith only that we can
25
Hudson, Religion in America, pp. 213-15.
Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms o/Congregationalism, 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia & Boston: The Pilgrim Press, 1960), pp. 553-4.
27
The Burial Hill Declaration, II in Ibid., p. 563.
26
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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transmit to our children a free and happy, because a Christian,
commonwealth ….With all who hold these truths…w e will carry the gospel
into every part of this land, and with them we will go into all the world,
and 'preach the gospel to every creature.'28
Strong's Formative Influences and Experiences
Josiah Strong was an impressionable eighteen years old when the Civil War
ended, and the Burial Hill Declaration was adopted by the Congregational churches. He
had been raised in a staunchly Congregationalist home in Hudson, Ohio, which at the
time was part of Connecticut's "Western Reserve." He was a seventh generation
descendant of the English Puritan migration.29 His Connecticut-born grandparents had
migrated to Hudson in 1836, where they became members of the First Congregational
Church and active abolitionists. It was at the same church that Strong, at the age of
thirteen, after years of internal struggle, "openly acknowledged" his own faith, and
became an active member. As Josiah Strong's daughters later remarked, the Strong
family's religious heritage included concern "for the divine life," "attainments in divine
knowledge and human science," cultivation of “true faith,” interest in "final salvation,"
and experience of the "moral change" associated with conversion, personal piety, Sabbath
keeping and participation in social reform activities. 30
Strong's early religious and theological orientation was reinforced and further
defined by his formal education. He attended two nearby Presbyterian schools, Western
Reserve College from 1865 to 1869, then Lane Seminary until 1871. Both of these church
related institutions had been founded upon a specific commitment to prepare persons for
28
Ibid., pp. 563-4.
His ancestor, John Strong, emigrated from England in 1630. His grandfather,
Ephraim Strong, was born in Woodbury, Connecticut, and studied law at Yale, graduating
in 1792. Elsie Strong and Margery Strong, Josiah Strong: Social Pioneer, Manuscript I
(Tms), Part I, "Ancestry and Early Influences," 1-7. Josiah Strong Papers, The Burke
Library, Union Theological Seminary, New York.
30
Strong and Strong, Josiah Strong, "Boyhood in Hudson," pp. 13-14.
29
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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Christian ministry in and for the American west. Western Reserve College had been
founded in 1827 as "an instrument which would provide 'an able, learned, and pious
ministry' for the infant churches …in the wilderness."31 Lane was begun only two years
later, in 1829. Its first president and professor of theology had been the Congregationalist
revivalist Lyman Beecher, whose well-known "A Plea for the West" in 1835 had declared
that "the religious and political destiny of our nation is to be decided in the West," and
that destiny would depend upon the outcome of “a conflict of institutions for the
education of her sons, for the purposes of superstition or evangelical light; of despotism
or liberty.”32
As if in fulfillment of this vision, Josiah Strong began his ministerial career in
1871 as a home missionary in Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory, under the auspices of the
American Home Missionary Association. The two years he spent in Cheyenne provided
Strong with first-hand experience of both the "uncivilized" nature of the American
frontier and the transformational power of the Christian gospel. Here he simultaneously
preached for conversions, and labored with measurable success for church growth,
temperance, the establishment of a public library and the banning of prostitution.33 After
two years in the western town popularly referred to at the time as "hell on wheels," for
31
Frederick Clayton Waite, Western Reserve University, The Hudson Era: A
History of Western Reserve College and Academy at Hudson, Ohio, from 1826 to 1882
(Cleveland: Western Reserve University Press, 1943), pp. 330-8; 219-27.
32
Lyman Beecher, "A Plea for the West," pp. 11-12, quoted in Colin Brummitt
Goodykoontz, Home Missions on the American Frontier, With Particular Reference to
the American Home Missionary Society (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1939), p. 379.
Tuveson also discussed the significance of this tract in "Chosen Race …Chosen People,"
chapter 5 in Redeemer Nation, pp. 169-73.
33
For a detailed account of Strong's activities in Cheyenne, see Dorothea R.
Muller, "Church Building and Community Making on the Frontier, A Case Study: Josiah
Strong, Home Missionary in Cheyenne, 1871-1873," The Western Historical Quarterly
10, no. 2 (April 1979), pp. 191-216.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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family reasons Strong returned to his boyhood town of Hudson, where he had been
invited to serve as chaplain and instructor at Western Reserve College. 34
Three years later, when the school phased out its theology department, Strong
accepted a pastoral position in Sandusky. It was while serving in Sandusky that Strong
became profoundly interested in the issues of Christian missions and stewardship. In a
series of “missionary mass meetings held among the Congregational churches throughout
the state of Ohio,” Strong was called upon to close "with a plea on behalf of Christian
Stewardship." His interest and ability in addressing mission and stewardship concerns led
Strong in 1881 "to accept a call to the secretaryship of the Ohio Home Missionary
Society." This administrative post managed Congregational home missions work for the
American Home Missionary Society in Ohio, western Pennsylvania, western Virginia and
Kentucky. 35 Building upon his training and the first-hand experience he had already
gained as home missionary, chaplain, instructor and pastor in the American West, in this
new position Strong was able "to study the home missionary problem in all its aspects",36
and to develop the philosophy of home missions that he was to popularize in the years
ahead.
Strong quickly realized that his work was cut out for him. By September of 1882,
he had done some traveling, and sent out an "interrogatory circular" to the churches in his
region, the results of which convinced him that it was a field of spiritual "destitution." He
discovered that ninety Congregational churches had already become "extinct" or
discontinued in Ohio, that many were "spiritually 'dead four days'" with no preaching,
Sunday-Schools, prayer-meetings or family altars; and that many were "comatose" from
34
Strong's daughters cited the ill health of Josiah's mother, Elizabeth, back in
Hudson; and Josiah and Alice's infant daughter, Katie, as factors in their return. Katie
died on the Strongs' way back to Hudson. Strong and Strong, Josiah Strong, "Home
Missionary-Cheyenne, Wyoming," pp. 17-18.
35
"Ohio Home Missionary Society," The Home Missionary, 55, no. 3 (July 1882),
p. 76.
36
Josiah Strong, conversation with Frances E. Willard, quoted in Strong and
Strong, Josiah Strong, "The Return to Northern Ohio," p. 7.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
14
lack of pastoral leadership. Many areas within his district were without any Christian
presence at all, not to mention Congregational churches. 37
Through preaching engagements and publications, Strong began to press the
stronger churches more faithfully to furnish the means for the weaker. He also
encouraged the inauguration of an "evangelistic movement" among the pastorless
churches, directed by the OHMS.38 By July of 1884 he reported a successful, fifty percent
increase of missionary service in the district over the previous year, and "an exceptional
number of revivals, which have greatly strengthened our churches and lifted them up
toward self-support."39
His responsibilities as Secretary quickly propelled Strong to a place of local
visibility and prominence. The nature of his work in the Ohio region acquainted him with
the condition of each local congregation and the effectiveness of each pastor.40 It also
placed him in an influential position in seeking and recommending new appointments.
Strong travelled widely, preaching on themes conducive to sacrificial giving and
37
Josiah Strong, "Destitution in the Ohio Field," The Home Missionary 55, no. 5
(September 1882), pp. 135-7. The July 1882 report of the Society listed a total of 203
Congregational churches in the district "that have not received aid the past year from this
Society," some only because "they had not life enough" to "call on the Society for aid." It
reported fifty vacant churches, and "a large number of weak churches, sixteen with less
than twenty members, thirty-six with less than thirty members, seventy-three with less
than fifty members, and one hundred and fifty with less than one hundred members."
"Ohio Home Missionary Society," The Home Missionary 55, no. 3 (July 1882), pp. 76-7.
Von Rohr indicated that the Congregationalist "home missionary program was a
struggling enterprise" during this period, and that "despite the enthusiasms of seaboard
revivals western missions were given only modest support." Von Rohr, American
Congregationalism, p. 267.
38
Strong, "Destitution in the Ohio Field," p. 137. The details of this program were
not spelled out.
39
"Ohio Home Missionary Society," The Home Missionary, 57, no. 3 (July 1884),
p. 104.
40
John R. Scotford, "The Rise of the State Superintendent," The Missionary
Herald, 132, no. 1 (January 1936), p. 9.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
15
expansion of home missions programs,41 and regularly publishing short articles to
promote home missions in The Home Missionary. He was required to attend national
conferences as a representative of the Ohio Society, which brought him into contact with
other regional and national denominational leaders and philosophers of home missions
efforts.42
The Third Incarnation of "Our Country"
Josiah Strong was brought up and educated in an evangelical Congregationalist
environment where piety and social reform efforts went hand in hand. As a teenager
during the Civil War, he experienced the great national drama in a very personal way, for
his family had longstanding abolitionist commitments, and his older brother, William,
actually fought in the war. In Wyoming territory and Ohio, he worked for and witnessed
the transformation of individuals and communities through the preaching and social
application of the gospel message. At the age of 37, well steeped in Congregationalist
church experience and convictions, he was successfully administrating and inspiring a
large geographical area of Congregationalism, with noticeably positive results.
It was in 1884, while serving as Secretary of the Ohio Home Missionary Society,
that Josiah Strong was asked by the American Home Missionary Society to revise Our
Country. Number Two. A Plea for Home Missions.43 This was a brief, admittedly
41
Within the first two years of his serving as Secretary of the OHMS, he preached
over forty times on "The Great Opportunity," and thirty times on "Christian Stewardship."
Among other titles were included, "The Future of the United States and the Duties Which
That Future Lays on the Present," "Famine in the Ministry," "The Relation of Home
Missions to the Future of the Republic," "The Dependence of Foreign Missions on Home
Missions." Strong and Strong, Josiah Strong, "Secretary of the OHMS," pp. 11-17. None
of these are extant in manuscript form, but some of the titles imply possible incorporation
into Strong's Our Country.
42
Ibid., pp. 15-16.
43
AHMS, Our Country. Number Two. A Plea for Home Missions was a revision
of Our Country: Its Capabilities, Its Perils, and Its Hope: Being a Plea for the Early
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
16
unsystematic and incomplete presentation of the Society's rationale, and its urgent need
for contributions to and expansion of home missions efforts in the United States. It put
forth and illustrated the AHMS's vision of a Christian America and its mission to the
world, declaring that
…p reparations for vast results are going on within this continent –
results which must affect, in a serious degree, the most precious interest of
mankind; and it is apparent that the substantial CHRISTIANIZATION OF
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE is of great moment, alike to the cause of
human freedom and civilization and to the progress of the Divine
Kingdom.44
It presented the "present and prospective greatness" of the United States in terms
of its immense land mass, abundant agriculture, unsurpassed manufacturing possibilities,
mineral resources, communications, commerce and future population. Reflecting a
religious view of history inherited from Puritanism, one which acknowledged a place for
both divine and human involvement, it argued that the glorious results of U.S. greatness
"will not be reached, unless our country be thoroughly evangelized." In other words, it
expressed a conditional form of manifest destiny, conditional upon the faithful response
of American Christians in evangelizing the nation through home missions. Affirming the
historical significance of the Puritan experiment in North America, it attributed "the
peculiar and wonderful success of American colonization" thus far to the influences of
"the religious system of our Puritan fathers," or "the pervading influence of a pure
Christianity." It asserted that "the spread of the old English stock, by peaceful
colonization, over the unpeopled world, is the grandest phenomenon now visible on
earth." The American experiment was
Establishment of Gospel Institutions in the Destitute Portions of the United States (New
York: American Home Missionary Society, 1842).
44
AHMS, Our Country, 2. Note the hope of Christianizing the U.S. populace, and
its correlation with the advance of the Divine Kingdom. The post-millennial notion of the
Kingdom of God became increasingly prominent in Protestant and social gospel thought
during this period, including Strong's.
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17
…t he mightiest visible agency, which God is now employing, to
change the religious and social condition of the human race, and plant the
Christian religion over the world. To make England and America
thoroughly Christian, is to fill the world with the knowledge of the Lord. It
is to plant the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every land, before the year of our
Lord, 2000.45
The AHMS recognized its “ultimate end,” in conjunction with foreign missions as
"the conversion of mankind, to a living faith in Jesus Christ." Its own “particular object”
was "the Christianization of the American people" toward achieving that "high end."46
The role of home missions in this grand scheme, especially in the western states and
territories, which were rapidly being settled by a wide variety of European immigrants,
many unchurched, became obvious. Not to try energetically to convert these people was
to foil God's plan for the "complete evangelization" of the earth.47 On the other hand, to
be engaged in home missions in the U.S. was to help raise up “a light to lighten the
Gentiles …in behalf of the world.”48
Having been written prior to the Civil War, the handbook was clearly outdated. It
mentioned slavery as one of the great "obstacles to home missions," calling it “a fearful
hindrance to the spread of the principles, and to the renovating power of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ.”49 The AHMS had also become a predominantly Congregationalist
enterprise since the last edition of the handbook had appeared. In the interest of renewing
the Congregationalist vision, and meeting the new challenges before it, the AHMS
selected Josiah Strong to revise Our Country. This body had confidence that Josiah
Strong could effectively update and reinvigorate their handbook, just as his work had
already effectively reinvigorated many western Congregational churches.
45
AHMS, Our Country, pp. 17-18.
lbid., p. 84.
47
Ibid., pp. 118-20.
48
Ibid., p. 28.
49
Ibid. pp. 81-2.
46
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18
Lest Strong be considered an anomaly to later generations, it is important to
emphasize that his revised version of Our Country was to retain, though it also built upon,
the basic message and outlook of the earlier editions. Strong would affirm the divinely
sanctioned role and influence of the colonial Puritans and their "pure" religion as the basis
of Christian civilization in America. He would also recognize and further elaborate the
unique and powerful contribution of the "old English stock" as it spread itself throughout
the world through "peaceful" colonization. Strong's work in frontier areas had confirmed
for him, in line with Our Country's thesis, that "this century would determine the
character of the West. The West would determine the character, and hence the destiny of
the nation, and this nation would hold in its hands the destiny of the world." The idea of a
conditional, but manifest destiny, would also be contained in Strong's revision.50
Strong's updated version of the missionary handbook would express what was
then considered mainline Congregationalist thought. It corresponded closely with the
gospel mission statement of the Burial Hill Declaration, to "carry the gospel into every
part of this land, and …into all the world, and 'preach the gospel to every creature.'" It also
followed very closely upon the 1805 document's more specific themes. In particular,
salvation was seen as being personal and spiritual, but also social and temporal. The
mission of the church, interdenominationally conceived, was a national and a global one.
The changes Strong made in his revision consisted of updating and adding to the
statistics supporting the argument for home missions, particularly in the West; developing
a lengthy section discussing the current "perils" which confronted the nation in its
50
Even before he was asked to revise the Society's handbook, Strong had become
convinced not only of its basic argument, but also of its need for updating. In fact, he
perceived the hand of Providence in the Society's invitation to him to revise Our Country,
for, as he indicated later, "for three years before the book was written, there probably was
not one waking hour when the general subject was not in my mind." Having just
concluded that he "must write that book or burst," he was suddenly asked to do it. Josiah
Strong, Conversation with Frances Willard, transcript in Strong and Strong, Josiah
Strong, "Secretary of the Ohio Home Missionary Society," pp. 18-19.
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19
mission; and elaborating on the role in human destiny that the English-speaking "AngloSaxon," if faithful, would fulfill.
Strong began his work by restating the argument for support of home missions:
Several years ago Professor Austin Phelps said: "Five hundred
years of time in the process of the world's salvation may depend on the
next twenty years of United States history." It is proposed in the following
pages to show that such dependence of the world's future on this
generation in America is not only credible, but in the highest degree
probable.51
Typical of the revivalist preaching style which aims at precipitating a decisive
response, a compelling tone of crisis is exuded throughout Strong's book.52 He
51
Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and its Present Crisis (New
York: The Baker and Taylor Co., 1885), p. 1.
52
For a discussion of the "crisis" style of exhortation see H. Richard Niebuhr, The
Kingdom of God in America (Chicago and New York: Willett, Clark and Co.,
1937), pp. 182-4; and Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New
York: Octagon Books, 1963), pp. 114-15. The crisis mood also reflects what has been
called "the paranoid style" characteristic of Enlightenment thought, which emphasized the
role of human "will and intention" in the outcome of human affairs. See Gordon S. Wood,
"Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century,"
William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., 39, no. 3 (July 1982), pp. 401-41. For an
assessment of Strong in particular, see Paul R. Meyer, "The Fear of Cultural Decline:
Josiah Strong's Thought about Reform and Expansion," Church History 43 (September
1973), pp. 396-405. As Janet Fishburn pointed out, in naming these perils, Strong
effectively "evoked and expressed middle class anxieties" of the late nineteenth century."
Janet Forsythe Fishburn, The Fatherhood of God and the Victorian Family: The Social
Gospel in America (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p. 86. William R. Hutchison, in
The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press,
1976), pp. 145-7; 167-9 noted the infrequency of "crisis terminology," except for Strong's
Our Country and George Herron's Larger Christ, in liberal literature prior to 1900.
Between 1900 and 1910, such terminology became steadily more common among Social
Gospel writers. Hutchison was willing to attribute the shift to "the sheer fact of passage
from the nineteenth into the twentieth century, or…r evulsion against the selfcongratulatory publicity surrounding that event." After 1900, it was also "simply a
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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deliberately developed in his revision a deep sense of urgency to prompt immediate and
considerable response to home missions needs. Because of the rise of certain "great ideas"
in the past hundred years, including "individual liberty," "honor to womanhood" and "the
enhanced valuation of human life," combined with the discovery, settlement and
development of the last "New World," Strong proclaimed that "the closing years of the
nineteenth century" were second in historical importance only to the years of the
Incarnation. Strong repeated the earlier handbooks' assessment that the United States was
capable of, and destined to support a vast population because of its size. He developed the
idea of the importance of the U.S. West in the process of Christianization, into a virtual
prophecy of the soon-to-be "supremacy" of that region in population, wealth, power and
influence over the East.53
In keeping with the overall tone of crisis, a major section of Strong's Our Country
described seven great perils which stood in the way of more completely establishing a
Christian civilization in the U.S. Strong's perception and interpretation of these perils
reveal his nineteenth-century, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, democratic biases. The first six
perils he addressed were immigration, Romanism, Mormonism, intemperance, socialism
and wealth. The seventh was the focalization of all the others in the city. He sought to
make clear to his readers the contingency of the success of the great missionary program
upon divinely assisted Christian faith and fidelity in overcoming these perils, devoting a
full chapter to each one.54 In all this, he virtually equated the U.S. republican institutions
endangered by the seven perils with the foundations of Christian Civilization. 55
function of the liberal movement's further coming-of-age …Applied liberalism was now
becoming far more visible …[and] was being elaborated in more and more areas of
Christian concern." C. Howard Hopkins in The Rise of the Social Gospel in American
Protestantism 1865-1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), p. 322, likewise
attributed the "note of crisis" in the Social Gospel message to "the religious character of
the movement and also …[to] its activistic nature," in continuity with the anti-slavery and
temperance crusades which preceded it.
53
Strong, Our Country, pp.4, 5, 17-29.
54
William McGuire King discussed the similarities in theologies of history in the
social gospel movement as a whole, which allow for God's activity in history, and the
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
21
The earlier handbook had discussed the phenomenon of vast immigration under
the heading "Immigration a Providential Movement," meaning an act of God designed "to
promote both the temporal and spiritual interests of all concemed."56 Strong listed it as the
first of the seven perils confronting Christendom, especially in the U.S. While
recognizing that "immigration brings unquestioned benefits" to the nation, Strong
emphasized instead the dangers it presented. "The typical immigrant is a European
peasant," he wrote, "whose horizon has been narrow, whose moral and religious training
has been meager or false, and whose ideas of life are low."57 What is more, he pointed
out, the very process of immigration was demoralizing. He offered statistics to show that
illiteracy, crime rates, Sabbath breaking and liquor trafficking were higher in incidence
among immigrants than among the general U.S. populace, as were the percentage of
Roman Catholics and the numbers susceptible to becoming "victims of Mormonism." All
these factors were having a detrimental effect on the U.S. vote, especially in the West and
in the cities, where the majority of immigrants were settling, and which were destined
increasingly to become the seats of power.58 In short, the peril of immigration presented a
major threat to the survival of the nation. He concluded:
Our safety demands the assimilation of these strange populations,
and the process of assimilation will become slower and more difficult as
contingency of reform upon human involvement, in "'History as Revelation' in the
Theology of the Social Gospel," Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 1 (1983), pp. 11029.
55
William R. Hutchison discussed this equation, frequently made or assumed by
U.S. Americans during Strong's era, in "A Moral Equivalent for Imperialism: Americans
and the Promotion of 'Christian Civilization', 1880-1910," in Missionary Ideologies in the
Imperialist Era: 1880-1920, eds. Torben Christiansen and William R. Hutchison
(Denmark: Christensens Bogtrykkeri, 1982), pp. 167-78. See also Robert T. Handy,
Christian America, pp. 109; 127; 139-40, for an assessment of Strong's role in the
promotion of the idea of Christian civilization.
56
AHMS, Our Country, pp. 37-8.
57
Strong, Our Country, p. 40.
58
Ibid., pp. 43-5.
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22
the proportion of foreigners increases …We may well ask – and with
special reference to the West – whether this in-sweeping immigration is to
foreignize us, or we are to Americanize it.59
He illustrated the problem by comparing the U.S. with a lion being forced to digest an
entire ox, "without being consulted as to time, quantity or quality." It was conceivable
that "under such conditions the ignoble ox might slay the king of beasts." Digestion
represented assimilation, and the only alternative was death.60
"Romanism," the second peril, was dangerous to the U.S. because it threatened
liberty of conscience, free speech, free press, free schools, and the loyalty and obedience
of U.S. citizens to their country and its laws, all building blocks of a democratic,
Christian civilization.61 On a similar note, Mormonism was a peril less because of its
disgraceful practice of polygamy, than because it was based on "ecclesiastical despotism,"
and it was attempting to establish its own "temporal kingdom" in the valleys of the U.S.
West.62
With the progress of civilization, the danger of intemperance, the fourth peril, was
being intensified, Strong continued. This in part because of the greater likelihood of
persons living in more advanced cultures to desire added stimulants. But it was also due
to the higher susceptibility, physiologically, "to the evil results which attend excess of any
kind" in the more highly developed nervous systems characteristic of more highly
developed civilizations, such as the U.S.63 Furthermore, because of the drier climate of
59
Ibid., p. 45. For a discussion concerning Strong's “radical assimilationism,” see
Ralph E.
Luker, The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 18851912 (Chapel Hill and London, The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 26873.
60
Ibid., p. 46. Strong had pressed this argument about assimilation, and used the
same illustration, adapted from Lyman Beecher, in an "Address" published in The Home
Missionary 56, 4 (August 1883), pp. 153-6.
61
Strong, Our Country, pp. 46-50.
62
Ibid., pp. 61-2.
63
Strong quoted extensively from George M. Beard's American Nervousness on
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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the region, the people of the West were becoming the most highly nervous of all, and
therefore they were most vulnerable both to the temptations of liquor, and to its effects.
The "liquor power," in control of an expanding market, was not above systematically
corrupting public morals in order to reap its own economic benefits. As a result, it
threatened ultimately to "defeat the popular will," which, in a democracy, was supposed
to safeguard the future of the nation. Once again, concluded Strong, the alternative
“seems simple, clear, certain, that civilization must destroy the liquor traffic, or be
destroyed by it.”64
The fifth peril was socialism. Strong saw favorable conditions for the
development of socialism in the U.S. since "socialism fattens on discontent," and
discontent was growing among the populace. This was a result of American capitalist
"despotism," the practice of "modern and republican" feudalists, who managed by
controlling certain markets to force many into poverty.65 Socialism, a threat to free
institutions and free enterprise, represented a step backwards in the evolution of modern
civilization, Strong contended.66 Another way of putting it, socialism “thinks to
regenerate society without regenerating the individual.” It “attempts to solve the problem
of suffering without eliminating the factor of sin.” 67
In what had rapidly and recently become the richest nation in the world, wealth,
with its various outgrowths of mammonism, materialism, luxuriousness and congestion,
was the sixth U.S. peril, according to Strong. "It will only prove the means of
destruction," he wrote, “unless it is accompanied by an increasing power of control, a
this topic.
64
Strong, Our Country, pp. 76, 83, 78.
65
Ibid., pp. 100, 106.
66
Ibid., pp. 111-12.
67
Ibid., p. 85. For a discussion about the uneasy relationship between Christianity
and increasingly popular socialism in the U.S. in the decades following Our Country, see
Robert T. Handy, "Christianity and Socialism in America, 1900-1920," Church History
21, no. 1 (March 1952), pp. 39-54.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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stronger sense of justice, and a more intelligent comprehension of its obligations.” 68 In his
closing plea for home missions, Strong would offer more direct advice on the use of
money.
Finally, the city, "the nerve center" and "the storm center" of our civilization,
presented the seventh peril. "The city has become a serious menace to our civilization,
because in it, excepting Mormonism, each of the dangers we have discussed is enhanced,
and all are focalized."69 To make matters more precarious, in U.S. cities, where their
influence was needed the most, churches were less prevalent than in other areas.70
Strong argued that "to preserve republican institutions requires a higher average
intelligence and virtue among large populations than among small." Because of the
aforementioned perils, however, the average intelligence in the U.S., as measured by
illiteracy rates, was doomed to decrease without some kind of swift intervention. More
importantly, the "corruption of popular morals," measured by increased Sabbath
desecration, use of intoxicating liquors, and rising divorce rates indicated an overall
national trend “in the direction of the dead-line of vice.”71 And, whereas “the fundamental
idea of popular government is the distribution of power” every indication was that
"centralized power is rapidly growing." In the final analysis, “together these perils
constitute an array which seriously threatens our free institutions,” and which would
inevitably present "an open struggle between the destructive and the conservative
elements of society," and the “real test of our institutions.”72
68
Strong, Our Country, p. 120. Strong's assessment of the dangers of wealth was
"typical" of many concerned preachers at the time according to Hopkins, Rise of the
Social Gospel, pp. 100-2.
69
Strong, Our Country, pp. 128-9. For a summary of Protestant churches'
response to urban challenges in Strong's time see Aaron Ignatius Abell, "The City as a
New Challenge to Protestant Churches," chap. in The Urban Impact, pp. 3-26.
70
Strong, Our Country, pp. 133-4. Strong estimated that on the average, "the
city …is from one-third to one-fifth as well supplied with churches as the nation at large.
And church accommodations in the city are growing more inadequate every year." p. 134.
71
Ibid., pp. 140-1.
72
Ibid., pp. 142-4.
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Having presented the perils which were seriously endangering the U.S. republic,
the highest existing example of Christian civilization, Strong presented the providential
means by which the desired outcome of the historical situation, from the perspective of a
home missions evangelist, could be reached. As a loyal Congregationalist, he invoked the
remembrance of "the influences which molded New England institutions," pointing out
that “the Pilgrim fathers sought these shores not simply as refugees, but also as
missionaries.” 73 Given the "dangerous influences …being brought to bear upon the new
settlements of the West with peculiar power, are the neutralizing and saving influences of
the Christian religion equally strong?" he asked rhetorically.74 The West was to be the
focus of home missions, for
…it is the West, not the South or the North, which holds the key to
the nation's future. The center of population, of manufactures, of wealth,
and of political power is not moving south, but west …[There] society is
still chaotic; religious, educational and political institutions are embryonic;
but their character is being rapidly fashioned by the swift, impetuous
forces of intense western life.75
He concluded the chapter with the terse statement, "Know Thy Opportunity".
Manifest Destiny and the Anglo-Saxon
It is in chapter thirteen, "The Anglo-Saxon and the World's Future," that Strong
interjected his most original contribution into the home missionary discourse. What was
so poignant about this section of the book was that in it Strong introduced a religious
interpretation of the increasingly widespread, culturally sanctioned motif of Anglo-Saxon
superiority.76 Though this form of prejudice has since fallen into disfavor and been
73
Ibid., p. 149.
Ibid., pp. 151-2.
75
Ibid., pp. 152-3.
76
Numerous studies have shown that belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority had
become firmly entrenched in much English and American thinking well before Charles
Darwin or Josiah Strong appeared on the scene. See Tuveson, "Chosen Race …Chosen
74
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subjected to much criticism, it was Strong's way of utilizing what was then a socially
acceptable paradigm for promoting home missions in the context of world
evangelization. 77
In 1859, one year after the second version of Our Country appeared, Charles
Darwin's Origin of Species was published. Because it was considered so "patently
subversive of Christian theology …most Protestants who analyzed the theory of organic
evolution prior to 1875 focused their efforts on showing that it was bereft of scientific
People," chapter 5 in Redeemer Nation, pp. 137-86. Hofstadter wrote, for instance, that
"the mystique of Anglo-Saxonism, which for a time had a particularly powerful grip on
American historians, did not depend upon Darwinism either for its inception or for its
development …Like other varieties of racism, Anglo-Saxonism was a product of modern
nationalism and the romantic movement rather than an outgrowth of biological science."
Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 172. Reginald Horsman, in Race and Manifest Destiny:
The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1981) concluded that "belief in white American superiority was firmly ensconced in the
nation's ideology by 1850," and that it "was directly linked to the new scientific interest in
racial classification. But in a more general sense it involved the whole surging Romantic
interest in uniquness, in language, and in national and racial origins." Horsman, Race and
Manifest Destiny, pp. 4-5. Once Darwin's theory of natural selection came forth,
especially as interpreted and given social application by Herbert Spencer and John Fiske,
"it did become a new instrument in the hands of the theorists of race." In turn, "in the
decades after 1885, Anglo- Saxonism, belligerent or pacific, was the dominant abstract
rationale of American imperialism." Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, pp. 10; 172. Jim
Moore, in "Herbert Spencer's Henchman: The Evolution of Protestant Liberals in Late
Nineteenth-Century America" makes the case for a special affinity between Spencer's
thought and a liberalized form of Calvinism: "In a world of bewildering change his
sociology furnished a systematic and transcendental justification, as Calvinism had, for
law and order, and hope." John Durant, ed., Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution
and Religious Belief (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 91.
77
This is the chapter from which Strong is frequently quoted in the interest of
illustrating nineteenth-century racism and/or imperialism. See, for example, Hofstadter,
"Racism and Imperialism," chap. in Social Darwinism, pp. 170-200; and Paul F. Boller,
Jr., "The Day of the Saxon," chap. in American Thought in Transition: The Impact of
Evolutionary Naturalism, 1865- 1900 (Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, 1969), pp.
199-226.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
27
merit." This included Congregationalist theologian Horace Bushnell, who wrote in 1868
that if Darwinism was ever proved to be true, "we may well enough agree to live without
religion."78 After 1875, however, when increasing numbers of scientists had begun to
show support for Darwin's theory, many Protestant thinkers became convinced that "it
was necessary to accept the theory and to accommodate Christian theology to its
dictates." Some, like Strong, “came to believe that the concept of evolution was not
simply a description of natural history but a paradigm for the way in which God operated
throughout …creation.” 79 Strong's Anglo-Saxonism was a religious interpretation of this
scientific theory, informed by his firm convictions about the transforming power of the
Christian gospel, and his belief in the divinely sanctioned role of the United States in
inaugurating the kingdom of God in the world. He was not to disappoint them.
Strong's Anglo-Saxonism had much in common with the pre-Darwinian, organic
view of society and post-millennial view of history expressed in Horace Bushnell's 1861
Christian Nurture.80 In fact, Strong quoted Bushnell's chapter eight, "The Out-Populating
Power of the Christian Stock," in his chapter on "The Anglo-Saxon." As theologians, both
Bushnell and Strong attempted, to some extent, to spiritualize the concept of race.
Bushnell did so to lend credence to his theory of Christian nurture, and Strong, to make
theological sense of the challenges presented to the Christian faith by the new, scientific
theories.
Both Bushnell and Strong believed that Anglo-Saxons had "inbred," superior
physiological qualities. For Bushnell, this was a result of the work of the Holy Spirit and
grace operating through successive generations of Christians, inducing Christian piety,
"education, habit, feeling, and character," which cumulatively "become predispositions"
78
Horace Bushnell quoted in Robert L. Edwards, Of Singular Genius, of Singular
Grace: A Biography of Horace Bushnell (Cleveland, Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1992), p.
207.
79
Jon Roberts, Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and
Organic Evolution, 1859-1900 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press,
1988), ix-xi; Ahlstrom, Religious History, p. 768.
80
Edwards, Horace Bushnell, p. 292.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
28
in offspring. Bushnell believed that "the populating power of any race, or stock, is
increased according to the degree of personal and religious character to which it has
attained." Thus, for Bushnell the spiritual superiority of a Christian civilization ultimately
effects a cultural superiority, and eventually even a physiological superiority in that
civilization, "race" or "stock." In his own words,
Good principles and habits, intellectual culture, domestic virtue,
industry, order, law, faith – all these go immediately to enhance the rate
and capacity of population. They make a race powerful, not in the mere
military sense, but in one that, by century-long reaches of populating force,
lives down silently every mere martial competitor. Any people that is
physiologically advanced in culture, though it be only in a degree, beyond
another which is mingled with it on strictly equal terms, is sure to live
down and finally live out its inferior. Nothing can save the inferior race but
a ready and pliant assimilation.81
Bushnell used the phrase "Christian stock," interchangeably with "a godly seed"
(Malachi 2:15), "the Christian body," "the Christian church," "a new supernatural order,"
"a spiritual nation" and "the Heavenly Colony." His purpose was to show how it was
"God's plan, by ties of organic unity and nurture, to let one generation extend itself into
and over another, in the order of grace, just as it does in the order of nature." Conversion
of the heathens was to be encouraged along with Christian nurture, but the latter was to be
emphasized. For finally, Bushnell believed, Christian "salvation will become an inbred
life and populating force, mighty enough to overtake, and finally to completely people the
world." Gradually, the "inferior" peoples would be "over-populated and taken possession
of by a truly sanctified stock." However, recognizing God's sovereignty and inscrutable
81
Because of its values, according to Bushnell, Christian culture effected
increased health, wealth, use of talent and respect of human rights and liberty. Although
he did not draw a direct correlation between "the Christian stock" and Anglo-Saxons, he
used the "Puritan stock" and the "Saxon" race as illustrations of its power and superior
"populating force." Horace Bushnell, Christian Nurture, (Charles Scribner, 1861; repro
Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1979), pp. 204, 202, 207, 210-12.
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will, he wrote, "it is for God to say what races are finally to be submerged and lost, and
not for us."82
Strong’ s views on "race" also combined spiritual and physiological aspects. Early
in his discussion of the role of the Anglo-Saxon, he made clear that he used the term
"somewhat broadly to include all English-speaking peoples," as the representative and
exponent of the two "great ideas" of "civil liberty" and "pure spiritual Christianity,"83
These two elements, he believed, comprised the fundamental bases for Christian
civilization, and they were the two main ideas God was bringing to fruition in the great
experiment in the former wilderness of North America.84 Because these two ideas
corresponded exactly to "the two great needs" of humankind, and because they "in the
82
Ibid., pp. 214, 217, 218. This last statement was intended to represent both an
incentive for Christian missions to "heathen peoples," and an acknowledgement of God's
sovereign, inscrutable will.
83
Ibid., pp. 160-1. Strong observed that though the Reformation originated in
Europe, the Celtic Europeans mainly remained Catholic, and "with rare and beautiful
exceptions, Protestantism on the continent has degenerated into mere formalism …with
[church] members who generally know nothing of a personal spiritual experience." Hence
"most of the spiritual Christianity in the world is found among Anglo-Saxons and their
converts." Ralph Luker and others have made the point that Strong's “Anglo-Saxonism”
reflected a religious and cultural, not a racial bias. Luker, The Social Gospel in Black and
White, pp. 268-73. Referring to the idea of Anglo-Saxon superiority expressed by Strong
in Our Country, Ernest Lee Tuveson concluded that "neither Strong nor anyone else in
the century had invented the articles of this doctrine. It was, on the contrary, the climax of
the Protestant millennialist interpretation of the [biblical] prophecies, combined with
certain ethnic theories which seemed, as if providentially, to support it. Tuveson,
Redeemer Nation, p. 138. The long term development of "ethnic theories" was traced by
Tuveson, from the biblical roots of the "chosen people" through medieval English
mythical tales and Reformation convictions concerning the Germanic and English
victories over the Papal AntiChrist. For a defensive view of Strong's "Anglo-Saxonism"
see Dorothea R. Muller, "Josiah Strong and American Nationalism: A Reevaluation," The
Journal of American History 53 (1966-1967), pp. 487-503.
84
Strong, Our Country, pp. 159-60. Tuveson, "Chosen Race …Chosen People,"
chap. In Redeemer Nation, placed Strong's Anglo-Saxonism in continuity with racial
theories of Strong's millenniallist forebears, pp. 137-75.
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past, have contributed most to the elevation of the human race, they must continue to be,
in the future, the most efficient ministers to its progress,"
…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. Add to this the fact of his rapidly
increasing strength in modern times, and we have well nigh a
demonstration of his destiny.85
Even though emigration from other parts of the world into Anglo-Saxon countries
exerted "a modifying influence on the Anglo-Saxon stock, their descendants are certain to
be Anglo-Saxonized," he declared.86 Strong cast a scenario which integrated his
spiritualized notion of the Anglo-Saxon, his providential view of history, and the gospel
imperative of the evangelization of the whole world:
It is not unlikely that, before the close of the next century, this race
will outnumber all the other civilized races of the world. Does it not look
as if God were not only preparing in our Anglo-Saxon civilization the die
with which to stamp the peoples of the earth, but as if he were also
massing behind that die the mighty power with which to press it? My
confidence that this race is eventually to give its civilization to mankind is
not based on mere numbers – China forbid! I look forward to what the
world has never yet seen united in the same race; viz., the greatest
numbers, and the highest civilization.87
In spelling out the practical implications of this theory, Strong became more
specific concerning U. S. destiny. And although for religious purposes Strong emphasized
the spiritual character of the Anglo-Saxon, his belief in the inherent, physiological
85
Strong, Our Country, p. 161.
Ibid., p. 163.
87
Ibid., p. 165.
86
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superiority of the Anglo-Saxon also became clear.88 Because the U.S., of all the AngloSaxon countries, will "have the great preponderance of numbers and of wealth," it will
also, logically receive "the scepter of controlling influence" in the world. 89 Not only will
it be most influential, he argued, but the U.S. will also "develop the highest type of
Anglo-Saxon civilization." Based on the growing "scientific" assumption that "human
progress follows a law of development," as a nation the U.S. was "the heir of all ages."90
He wrote, "our national genius …is the result of a finer nervous organization" than that
which characterized the Anglo-Saxon English. "The roots of civilization are the nerves,"
he explained, "and other things being equal, the finest nervous organization will produce
the highest civilization."91
To support his theory of impending U.S. superiority, Strong invoked the name of
Charles Darwin, and his theory of natural selection:
Mr. Darwin is not only disposed to see, in the superior vigor of our
people, an illustration of his favorite theory of natural selection, but even
intimates that the world's history thus far has been simply preparatory for
our future, and tributary to it. He says: "There is apparently much truth in
the belief that the wonderful progress of the United States, as well as the
character of the people, are the results of natural selection; for the more
energetic, restless, and courageous men from all parts of Europe have
88
Whether Strong's views on the physiological aspects of race owed more to
Bushnell, or to Darwin and Spencer is not clear, since he readily quoted all three. More
than likely, he thought that the latter confirmed the former, and owed something to each.
It has already been stated that Bushnell rejected Darwin's theories, but by the time Strong
wrote Our Country, many U.S. Protestant church leaders were accepting the new
scientific developments.
89
Ibid., p. 166.
90
Ibid., p. 168. For a discussion of Strong's melding of providential and scientific
causes behind the development of Christian civilization, see Philip D. Jordan, "Josiah
Strong and a Scientific Social Gospel," Iliff Review 42, no. 1 (Winter 1985), pp. 21-31.
91
Strong, Our Country, p. 169.
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emigrated during the last ten or twelve generations to that great country,
and have there succeeded best."92
Strong's openness to recent theories concerning the physiological aspects of race
was qualified by his spiritual concerns. He drew on the work of contemporary
ethnologists, contending that as a "mixed race" the U.S. Anglo-Saxon was superior. The
"ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, were all mixed races," he pointed out.
At the same time, he acknowledged God's sovereignty over the whole development. For
although “history repeats itself” in the creation of great civilizations out of mixed races,
he wrote, "the wheels of history are the chariot wheels of the Almighty, …there is, with
every revolution, an onward movement toward the goal of his eternal purposes."93 Strong
likewise quoted Herbert Spencer concerning the great future of the U.S., certainly
knowing that Spencer would not have been using spiritualized, but distinctly biological,
racial categories:
From biological truths it is to be inferred that the eventual mixture
of the allied varieties of the Aryan race, forming the population, will
produce a more powerful type of man than has hitherto existed, and a type
of man more plastic, more adaptable, more capable of undergoing the
modifications needful for complete social life. I think, whatever
difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they may
have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a
time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the
world has known. 94
92
lbid., p. 170. The citation given by Strong was "Descent of Man, " Part I., page
p. 142.
93
Ibid.
Herbert Spencer, quoted in Strong, Ibid., p. 172. Jim Moore discussed
Protestant clergy as popularizers of Herbert Spencer's evolutionary naturalism in "Herbert
Spencer’ s Henchmen: The Evolution of Protestant Liberals in Late Nineteenth-Century
America," chap. in Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief ed.
John Durant (Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 76-100.
94
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Given the history of competition between races of humanity, Strong assumed that
as all parts of the earth became filled with people, to the extent that "the pressure of
population on the means of subsistence" would be felt everywhere, there would be a
"final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled, "the outcome of
which would obviously be, the "survival of the fittest." Fortified with "unequal energy,"
"all the majesty of numbers and the might of wealth," representing "the largest liberty, the
purest Christianity, the highest civilization," and having "developed peculiarly aggressive
traits calculated to impress its institutions upon mankind," the Anglo-Saxon race would
finally "spread itself over the earth …To this result no war of extermination is needful; the
contest is not one of arms, but of vitality and of civilization."95
True to his upbringing as a Congregationalist, and to his purpose as a home
missions advocate, Strong couched this entire discussion in the context of the conditional
nature of God's blessings. He declared that "the Anglo-Saxon race would speedily decay
but for the salt of Christianity." For example, the reason for the notorious debauchery of
natives by Anglo-Saxon colonists was that "the pioneer wave of our civilization carries
with it more scum than salt."96
Strong expressed hopefulness, but he made a point of stating the contingency of
the outcome of the nation's situation on faithful Christian response. Though he had "no
doubt that the Anglo-Saxon is to exercise the commanding influence in the world's
future,"
…t he exact nature of that influence is, as yet, undetermined. How
far his civilization will be materialistic and atheistic, and how long it will
take thoroughly to Christianize and sweeten it, how rapidly he will hasten
the coming of the kingdom wherein dwelleth righteousness, or how many
ages he may retard it, is still uncertain; but it is now being swiftly
determined.97
95
Strong, Our County, p. 175. Strong also quoted Darwin to this effect, p. 176.
Ibid., pp. 176-7.
97
Ibid., p. 179.
96
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Strong closed the chapter by impressing upon his readers their Christian responsibility,
and the weight of the decision that would rest upon their faithfulness in responding. He
wrote,
Notwithstanding the great perils which threaten it, I cannot think
our civilization will perish; but I believe it is fully in the hands of the
Christians of the United States, during the next fifteen or twenty years, to
hasten or retard the coming of Christ's kingdom in the world by hundreds,
and perhaps thousands, of years. We of this generation and nation occupy
the Gibraltar of the ages which commands the world's future.98
If the future of the world depended on the fidelity of U.S. Christians, the
remaining key to "the triumph of the kingdom," was the consecration of “the power which
is in money.” In a lengthy closing chapter on Christian stewardship, Strong urged the
churches of the nation to rise "to a higher spirit of sacrifice," which would necessarily
flow from a recognition of duty, for "God has a right to the service of his own," to
everything belonging to a Christian, for, “whatever their occupation, Christians have but
one business in the world, viz., the extending of Christ's Kingdom.” 99
Conclusions: Josiah Strong, Manifest Destiny and American Missions
The late nineteenth century was a confusing time for Christians who wanted to be
intelligent about their faith. New developments in the fields of science, history and
biblical studies challenged old ways of thinking about how God works in history and in
human life. Josiah Strong's revision of Our Country represented an effort to make sense
of traditional notions of God's involvement in the world and God's expectations of people
of faith in the context of new historical and intellectual developments. Our Country
needed to be rewritten not only because the Civil War had expanded the field for
Congregational home missions, but also because the Christians who were supposed to be
supporting mission efforts needed a fresh ideology to inspire and challenge them to do so.
98
99
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., pp. 221, 217, 195.
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In his work of revising Our Country, Josiah Strong constructed an updated,
culturally conversant, religiously inspiring rationale for home missions. His framework as
a Congregationalist home missions advocate was the ages-old concept of the chosen
people called to be a righteous nation, "a city set on a hill" for all the world to see. Even
while secular prophets of U.S. manifest destiny were proclaiming unconditional
American rights to expansion, the earlier versions of Our Country were professing a
manifest destiny that was of necessity conditioned upon faithful obedience to the divine
directives. Because of his religious convictions, Josiah Strong had no choice but to retain
a conditional view of manifest destiny. But this conditional view of what God would
accomplish in the world could be charged with new energy using insights from recent
scientific studies. The world and even the people in it might be evolving, but if they were,
it was according to God's plan. God's original intent of the holy experiment in North
America was not only being fulfilled, it was being verified by the new science.
Strong's use of Darwin and Spencer in Our Country would seem to place him
perilously close to the edge of a naturalistic, or at least deterministic view of history in
which it was a foregone conclusion that certain races, in particular the "Anglo-Saxon,"
would ultimately stand at the pinnacle of all civilization. In order to be both conversant
with the new scientific theories, and consistent with the necessarily conditional view of
manifest destiny that he held, he was forced to qualify the category of "Anglo-Saxon" by
giving it "spiritual" definition. Thus Strong could preach that the Anglo-Saxon, as the
English-speaking embodiment of "pure spiritual Christianity" and "civil liberty" was one
and the same as the descendant of the earlier Puritan, chosen people. Only if faithful to
God's calling and mission to uphold and extend the foundations of Christian civilization,
would the final, God-given destiny of the "Anglo-Saxon" be fulfilled.
Our Country was only Strong's first book. He was to publish ten more, and
countless articles. The success of Our Country landed him the prestigious position of
General Secretary of the Evangelical Alliance for the United States from 1886 to 1898,
when he was forced to resign, ostensibly because of "differences of aims and methods,"
but more likely because of the emphasis on social Christianity that he was determined to
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998
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foster.100 The ideology for American missions that he had forged together in the chapters
of Our Country still contained the driving principles for his work, but by then he had
developed the practical, social implications of that ideology beyond the extent to which
many of his more conservative colleagues were willing to support him. 101
Strong's Our Country sold more than 175,000 copies in the 1880s. Given the
nearly five- fold increase in U.S. population since then, this would correspond to nearly
one million copies in the 1990s. The enthusiasm generated by his book speaks volumes
about the need that existed for a fresh approach, like his, to the challenges to faith and
sense of destiny presented by the nineteenth century. Strong gave his readers a way to
respond to those challenges by adopting some of the new language and paradigms they
offered, but adopting the new concepts only insofar as they fit with the traditional,
Congregationalist conditional version of manifest destiny that was sanctioned by the
American Home Missionary Society and his own religious convictions. Thus he
repackaged and delivered what was really wanted and needed in a turbulent and
confusing time: a reaffirmation of the ages-old vision of a Christian America, along with
a fresh vision of the nation's God-given mission to the world.
100
Philip D. Jordan, The Evangelical Alliance for the United States of America,
1847-1900: Ecumenism, Identity and the Religion of the Republic (New York and
Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), pp. 183-9.
101
The connection between manifest destiny, missions and the social gospel
movement remains to be spelled out elsewhere.
© Wendy Deichmann Edwards, 1998