Bread and bibles, p.14
Bread and Bibles, page 14
In fact, Moody was quite optimistic at times. Perhaps the most striking example of this optimism was the immensely influential Student Volunteer Movement, in whose founding Moody played a pivotal role. This movement was enthusiastically given to the cause of “the evangelization of the world in this generation.”224
Nevertheless, it is apparent that Moody’s premillennialism made him pessimistic about the trajectory of society and the ability of anything non-supernatural to alter that trajectory. As he put it in one of his sermons, “Someone will say, ‘Do you then, make the grace of God a failure?’ No, grace is not a failure, but man is. The antediluvian world was a failure; the Jewish world was a failure; man has been a failure everywhere, when he had his own way and been left to himself.”225 Despite this, Moody was very optimistic about evangelism. Further, although he strenuously preached the imminent return of Christ, he also made long-term plans.
Several factors explain this tension within Moody’s words and actions. First, Moody lacked theological sophistication. He had no interest in proposing a theological system. Instead, he was an evangelist who let the churches handle the teaching of theology. Second, Moody embraced a naïve biblicism. He ignored difficult passages in the Bible and issues raised by proponents of higher criticism. Moody was not interested it trying to make all the parts of the Bible fit together perfectly; he was far more interested in living the Bible. Moody was also optimistic about the evangelistic work of the Holy Spirit, not the progress of the human race. This is consistent with his doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, a problem remained. Moody believed regenerated people make society better, but it is not clear how Moody reconciled increasing conversions with a society that continued to decay rapidly. Apparently, he either did not see this tension or he simply ignored it.
CONCLUSION
Dwight Moody was a thoroughgoing evangelical. Revivalism and evangelicalism were the context for his conversion to and formation in faith. Their leading advocates and institutions taught and modelled the tradition to him. He believed in a nonsectarian Christianity that focused on God’s love. He believed the Bible was reliable, and a literal reading of the English text shaped his belief and practice. He held to a classic Protestant orthodoxy that emphasized human sinfulness, the atoning work of Christ on the cross, and the necessity of a regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. In the spirit of the times, he came to emphasize an ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit. Although his views were not developed and nuanced like those of Brookes and Darby, he was at the vanguard of the emergence of premillennialism. These beliefs drove Moody’s social vision and social action, the subject of the next chapter.
4
MOODY’S SOCIAL VISION
His Theological Understanding of Social Ills
Whitewashing the pump won’t make the water pure.1
—DWIGHT MOODY
The previous chapter provided a look at the critical elements of Moody’s theology. This chapter will show how that theology shaped Moody’s social vision. In short, Moody believed personal conversion was the key to solving the urban social problems of the mid to late nineteenth century. He remarked, “It is a wonderful fact that men and women saved by the blood of Jesus rarely remained subjects of charity.”2 In 1877, he said, “The nation is now crying ‘reform’ … but there can be no true reform until Christ gets into our politics. Men are all naturally bad, and cannot reform until the Reformer gets into their hearts.”3 Preaching at the 1876 revival in New York City, Moody commented, “I know there is great misery and suffering in this great city; but what is the cause of it? Why, the sufferers have become lost from the Shepherd’s care.”4 The picture becomes clear: Moody believed that social ills are solved by a change within the hearts of individual women and men. As Moody’s son William put it, “He insisted that the most efficacious means of reformation was through the individual.”5
Three essential points must be established at the outset. First, because Moody believed that individual conversion was the most productive means to bring about social change, it does not automatically follow that he objected to programmatic responses to social ills; he simply believed programs alone were ineffective. Second, Moody’s prioritization of evangelism over social action reflected the priorities of earlier evangelicals, including the great evangelist of the mid-nineteenth century Charles Finney and the renowned British preacher Charles Spurgeon. Third, Moody’s prioritization of evangelism reflected not only his personal theology and tradition but also his vocation.
CONVERSION, POVERTY, AND SOCIAL VICES
Undoubtedly, Moody believed that conversion was the only solution for urban social ills. For example, Moody firmly believed conversion would solve poverty. He contended that sin was the cause of much poverty; therefore, conversion to faith in Christ would free men and women from the various kinds of sin that held them in poverty. Moody believed two sins, in particular, intemperance and laziness, were primarily responsible for poverty.
Moody mainly focused on alcohol. Preaching in Boston in 1877, he remarked,
It strikes me this curse of intemperance is worse even than our civil war. That cut off a great many men—ten, twenty, thirty, perhaps forty years earlier than their time; but think of the men that are being ruined body and soul by this terrible curse; and my only hope is that the nation will get their eyes open to the fact that it is a curse, and that there will be a cry going up to God. I noticed a few days ago in the papers that in Great Britain alone $600,000,000 are spent annually on strong drink, or $18 for each man, woman and child in Great Britain, and yet they are crying out there about hard times, and we are crying out about hard times in this country. I think if it were not for this cursed liquor traffic, we would not have any hard times.6
Conversion brought freedom from addiction to drinking. “God,” he exclaimed, “is going to destroy the works of the devil, and this appetite for strong drink is one of the devil’s works. Taking away a man’s appetite for strong drink is a supernatural work, and that is what God does.”7
The second sin was laziness. Moody believed conversion would make people into energetic, hard workers. To Moody, this meant being a Christian means being a worker.8 In 1868, he remarked, “I never knew a lazy man to become a Christian…. It is the devil whose workers are idlers.”9 In Boston in 1877, Moody made the point explicitly.
I never knew yet a lazy man to be converted. If he was, he soon gave up his laziness. I tell you that laziness does not belong to Christ’s Kingdom. I don’t believe a man would have a lazy hair in his head if he was converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. If a man has been born of the Spirit of Christ, he isn’t lazy, he wants to find something to do, and any manual labor is not degrading.10
Moody pointed out that since Jesus worked as a carpenter, manual labor was not beneath Him. The point was clear: if Jesus was not above manual labor, no one else should be either.11 In explaining the work at the YMCA, he remarked, “Let’s keep harping on that word, WORK, until everyone who comes in here will feel perfectly wretched unless he is doing something for Christ.”12 Again, in 1868 he proclaimed, “Every Christian has work to do. It lasts as long as life lasts. When God wants us to rest, He will call us home to heaven.”13 In 1869, while discussing church membership, he said, “When a man wishes to come into our Church, we ask him, what are you going to DO?”14
This emphasis on work is sometimes overlooked in studies of Moody. As early as the 1860s, Moody connected conversion and Christianity with work. One of the few works concentrating on Moody’s early years made this point. The author August J. Fry attempted to summarize Moody’s theology during these years by condensing it into six points. He then added a seventh—work. He wrote, “No idea receives as much attention as this idea—work. It might be said, in spite of the dangerous gauntlet of psychologizing history, that Moody was compulsive about it.”15 Fry was correct. All of Moody’s schools included required manual labor for all students.
In fact, Moody literally worked himself to death. He insisted on conducting a campaign in Kansas City, despite suffering chest pains for two weeks before it began. Moody told a confidant that he did not tell anyone in his family because they would have prevented him from preaching. On Tuesday of the first week, he confided in his colleague regarding the pain in his chest, but he still refused to see a doctor for two hours. Finally, after consulting with the doctor, he again refused to stop speaking, although he was forced to travel the two blocks from his hotel to the meeting hall by carriage. He preached again that Friday night but was so exhausted that he was forced to leave on a train that very night. He did make it back to Northfield but died within two months.16
CHARITY AND SELF-INITIATIVE
Beyond mitigating the vices of alcohol and laziness, Moody asserted that conversion fills a human with the love of God, and this love, combined with the urge to work, produces charity toward others. In his sermon “To the Work! To the Work!” Moody made this connection clearly. “Christ has taught us very clearly that any man or woman who is in need of our love and help—whether temporal or spiritual—is our neighbor. If we can render them any service, we are to do it in the name of our master.”17
Moody’s disdain for laziness, enthusiasm for work, and regard for the Bible influenced his approach to charity. In an 1880 address to converted men, Moody cautioned against charity to men who will not work. He recounted a story of a man in Chicago who was married with five children. The man showed up at Moody’s home on a cold November morning. The man had no work, and the family had been evicted from their residence. When Moody asked the man what the problem was, he admitted he was lazy. Moody told the man, “I pity your wife and children, but I am not going to take care of a lazy man all winter.” In the evening, the man returned and asked for shelter for his wife and children. Moody recalled, “He knew I wouldn’t let those children stay out all night; he knew he had me.” When Moody asked what the man had been doing all day, he “used a great many big words, and said he had been studying the philosophy of pauperism.” Moody concluded: “It is not charity to help them. If a man will not work, let him starve. They never die. I never heard of them really starving to death. I never knew them to get out till they worked their way out.”18 As support for his view, Moody cited the Bible.19 He also provided for the wife and children.
At first glance, Moody’s behavior toward the family seemed inconsistent with his rhetoric. Having said men who do not work should be left to starve, he then cared for the man’s family. However, his behavior was consistent with his earlier work at the YMCA and the Sunday school. We have seen how he cared for the children and wives of alcoholic men. Moody’s reasoning on this was clear and grounded in what he believed the Bible taught. He argued that a man’s first job was to care for his family. He said that no one whose family is in want should give away money for charitable purposes. He then cited 1 Timothy 5:8: “If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.” Moody concluded, “There is what Paul said to you on that subject. He is worse than an infidel.”20 Moody believed the Bible held the husband responsible for his family; he must work. Therefore, while charity should not be directed toward a lazy husband, his spouse and children should be afforded full Christian charity.
Moody’s concern that charity ought not foster laziness also extended to his educational enterprises. Moody started several schools designed to provide educational opportunities for poor children. However, Moody demanded work on the part of his students. When asked why he did not offer free education for poor girls, he responded, “If a student can’t do her share, she isn’t worth educating. I am ready to meet any ambitious student halfway…. It’s better to help a person help himself. I find you can do real injury by doing too much for the individual.”21
Moody’s commitment to conversion as the catalyst for personal change explains why he was dubious about social programs not linked to conversion. In 1877, Moody made it clear he had no confidence in voluntary societies or the government to provide an ultimate solution to these problems.
We have tried a great many methods; we have our temperance societies and bands of hope, our lodges and our reform club, and we have had the pledge, and I don’t know but I am getting about discouraged with these things. I am coming to the conclusion that the only hope is that the Son of God is to come and destroy man’s appetite for liquor. You cannot legislate men to be good. We have appealed to our government, and we have failed, and now it is time to appeal to God…. When he comes to their hearts, he will give them victory over their appetites.22
Speaking on the same subject in 1880, Moody told the following story:
A man there [Philadelphia] had a house built when he was out of town, and the contractor built it with a brown-stone front, but made the sides an imitation, just on the surface. This stood for a while; but when the winter came, it began to crack, and in the spring, he had to have it repaired. And every year he had to have it fixed over until he put in a wall like the front. And that was like a sinner trying to make himself better, when what he needed was to be made over again, a new creature. How many who heard him had taken their oaths that they wouldn’t drink again, had taken pledges, had written their name with their own blood, had promised their wives, and mothers, and friends, they would stop the use of the intoxicating cup, and yet couldn’t keep them. It was like painting the pump, expecting to get pure water.23
When addressing social problems, Moody believed that any reformation effort must be subservient to evangelism. For example, in 1874, Moody was queried about the issue of drunkenness. He remarked, “It would take a day to answer that,” but articulated two sides to the question. On the one hand, Moody stated that he believed every Christian church ought to be a temperance society. In addition, he noted in passing that “some of the ministers and elders in Scotland … drink too much wine.”
On the other hand, he pointed out that too many temperance people prioritize temperance above all else. In doing so, they became like a one-string violin, annoying and ultimately ineffective. Moody concluded, “And so with temperance; only, when you get the chance of a word, slip it in, and give strong drink a rap.”24
Moody’s attitude toward prisoners is an excellent example of this priority on evangelism as a means for reform. He said,
We must not suppose that all prisoners are hardened criminals. Many a young man has committed a crime in a moment of anger, or under the influence of liquor. The records show that nearly half the prisoners are under twenty-five years of age. At this time of life a young man is not supposed to have become settled in his character. If he can be reached by the gospel message before he sinks lower and lower, there is every hope for his salvation for this life.25
Moody’s position reflected earlier American evangelicalism, particularly as Charles Finney expressed it. Like Moody, Finney always made personal conversion the priority of his work. While speaking aggressively and repeatedly against slavery and alcohol, neither took precedence over evangelism. Making the same argument Moody would make a half a century later, Finney maintained that social change was ultimately the product of personal conversion. This is a point that Charles Hambrick-Stowe made in his biography of Finney. Regarding Finney’s approach to abolition, he wrote, “The primary work must be to save sinners, for once saved, believers would reject slavery and every form of sin. Finney advocated making abolition an appendage, just as he made temperance an appendage of revival work in Rochester.”26
We have seen how the Chicago Fire served to focus Moody so that, after 1871, evangelism became his focus. As an evangelist, it followed that Moody would concentrate on conversion. Commenting on Moody’s ministry, Charles Spurgeon said:
I thank God that our dear brethren [Moody and Sankey] do not commit themselves to any particular line of thought other than the Gospel, and take no concern in various matters which are in dispute with different sections of Christians. I hold that every man should teach the entire truth as he believes it, and if he be a settled pastor, he must not keep back any part of it; but the evangelists are to show forth only the great cardinal truths of the Gospel, and this our friends do.27
However, his anthropology was the primary reason for Moody’s commitment to conversion as the only sure means of social change. Moody’s anthropology was a function of his evangelical theology—specifically, Moody’s belief that all humans are ruined by sin. As we saw in the last chapter in the section on the “Three Rs,” sin for Moody was personal, and a function of each person’s nature—a corrupt nature inherited from Adam.28 In other words, the nature of an individual, not their environment, determined his propensity to sin. As such, Moody simply could not see how any attempt to change the urban environment could ultimately solve social problems, which he believed were rooted in sin.
As a committed evangelical, Moody believed only Christ could redeem humans from sin. He thought that the sole remedy for human estrangement from God was the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. The cross did more than merely demonstrate God’s love; it cleared the object of sin out of the way and allowed humans to experience God’s love.
Moody believed God’s love was transformative. Thus, truly redeemed and regenerated men and women would work hard and love others. Their love would be supernaturally produced by the Holy Spirit and cause them to love those in need, including their enemies. As Moody put it, “The regenerate man loves his enemies and tries to repair all wrong he has done…. If this sign is not apparent his conversion has never got from his head to his heart.”29 Moody held that, because of sin, humans needed to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit. He believed humans are in such a condition that only a supernatural act of God can change them. For Moody, Christianity was an inside-out religion that re-created people internally before transforming the external world in which they lived. He, therefore, believed it was useless to attempt outside-in societal transformations.
