Dr. Barry Hankins is Professor of History and Church-State Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Baylor University. His latest book entitled, Jesus and Gin: Evangelicals, the Roaring Twenties, and Today's Culture Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, $26.00) focuses on a single decade of the American experiment, the turbulent 1920s. Or, as the brief period is usually dubbed, “The Roaring 20s.” Quite candidly, I had no idea what to expect when I began reading; before I was finished with chapter one, however, I knew Hankins’ book (heretofore identified as Jesus and Gin) to be a shiny little historical jewel >>>
Jesus and Gin has eleven even chapters not including a preface which tips the author’s hand about what he’s up to in the volume by rhetorically asking “What if we took the first and last quarters of the twentieth century as normal bookends that bracketed an unusual half century of religious harmony?" (2). Hankins then takes ten chapters to argue that, unlike the 50 odd years between the bookends, “religion today—divisive, flamboyant, controversial, and, most of all, a central feature of American culture”--is almost identical to religion in the 1920s.
As the first of ten chapters presented to illustrate his point, Hankins draws on the presidency of America’s first Baptist president, Warren G. Harding (5-20). Not unlike the womanizing antics of a more recent Baptist President, William Jefferson Clinton, Harding fully illustrates the “moral ambiguity” within our culture at the beginning of the “roaring twenties.” Though I could not personally appreciate one sex scandal after another Hankins rehearsed from Harding’s harem, his ability as a fair and judicious historian nonetheless was firmly established for me and created a healthy anticipation for the rest of the volume.
Chapter two entitled, “Prohibition as Culture War” (21-40) was particularly helpful in two ways: first Hankins offers an outstanding summary of the Prohibition years including a background leading up to Prohibition as well as what happened after repeal. Second, Hankins chapter at least partially vindicates my own brief research into Prohibition I did for my book, Alcohol Today: Abstinence in an Age of Indulgence (chapter two briefly explores Prohibition). Conventional wisdom assumes Prohibition to be a colossal failure. To this, Hankins writes: “One of the myths of Prohibition was that it was a failure” (35). Indeed to suggest Prohibition failed is “to say something that has been believed widely since the 1920s…” (36). However, Hankins rightly observes that whether Prohibition was a failure “depends upon what one believes it was intended to do” (36). In fact, most available data demonstrates that not only did alcohol consumption show dramatic decreases during Prohibition, but also researchers “find little evidence” that criminals like Al Capone were “created” as a result of Prohibition (38).
The next two chapters are biographical in nature, one representing fundamentalism and the other modernism—respectively Billy Sunday and Harry Emerson Fosdick (41-82). The polar opposites illustrate not only the theological division of the twenties but also the weird alliances. While Sunday was preaching an evangelical message appealing for masses to “hit the sawdust trail” in his tent revivals, the liberal Baptist Fosdick was preaching to overflowing crowds New York’s First Presbyterian Church. While, both men were against the “liquor industry,” Fosdick championed the liberal cause with his famous sermon, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Hankins colorfully interweaves into the narrative other personalities like Fosdick’s staunch conservative rival, Clarence Macartney as well as fundamentalist champion, J. Gresham Machen.
Of course, no study—introductory or otherwise—could be described as dealing with the 1920s if it did not rehearse the infamous Scopes Trial of Dayton, Tennessee in 1925 (chapter 5, 83-106). As expected, Hankins corrected the mythical legends the movie, Inherit the Wind spawned concerning the most reported trial of the 20th century. Building on historian, Edward Larson’s definitive history of Dayton’s trial, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 1998), Hankins judiciously records what “really happened” in the most famous public battle between science and evolution.
Space (and time) fails to be detailed in a short booklook. Moving on, then...
Chapter six reveals classic Pentecostalism’s most celebrated figure, Aimee Semple McPherson (107-132). Founder of the Four-square Gospel Church, McPherson was just as controversial to America in general as Pentecostalism was to Protestant Christianity in particular beginning in 1906. Hankins once again is judicious in handling the more disputed matters in her life, particularly the scandal for which she was arrested and tried but later acquitted.
Pentecostalism is not the only denomination which drew the charge of scandal, however. Baptist fundamentalism had its own colorful characters personified most perhaps in the Texas pastor, J. Frank Norris. Not only was Norris accused of mixing politics and religion but also, like McPherson, was arrested but fully acquitted--not of fraud like McPherson but of murder. Norris shot to death a man in his church office (chapter seven, 133-148).
Chapters eight through ten focus on religious turmoil in the African American community (“Daddy Grace” and “Father Divine”), cultural issues which sparked even more flames (censorship and obscenity), and anti-Catholicism most visbily demonstrated in the crusade against catholic Christian, Al Smith (the presidential election of 1928).
Finally, chapter 11 ties Hankins’ project together by showing how the “Roaring Twenties” set the stage for today’s culture wars. This may be the most disappointing chapter of all for two reasons. First, its length is barely half the other chapters. But, supposing it a history book, such is begrudgingly understandable. Second,. because Hankins offers what can only be described as a brilliant—albeit brief—analysis of what’s happened in the cultural milieu to so radically affect particular religious allies.
In the 1920s, evangelicals found themselves at bay with Roman Catholicism and, at times, even questioned whether or not Catholics could even be true Americans (e.g. Al Smith for president in 1928). Presently, however, evangelicals find Rome to be their greatest religious ally on social issues like abortion and gay rights to name only two. For Hankins, evangelicals began to think what was “instinctively” present in Catholics all along—“religion can be at odds with individual autonomy” (something fundamentalists in the twenties failed to see concerning Catholics) (217).
Moreover, the brand of freedom in the 1920s increasingly being equated with being a true American was individual autonomy, a notion fundamentalists rejected flatout. For them, not completely unlike Catholics' papal authority which over-ruled rugged individualism, fundamentalists possessed an authority which always overuled individual autonomy--an inerrant Bible. Hence, they naturally came to more irenic socio-cultural alliances. One wishes Dr. Hankins would have been offered enough space to tease out his analysis more fully.
Of course, the reader should know by now I found Jesus and Gin both fascinating and helpful—worth the price for sure. Few real weaknesses exists worth exploring. The author did go beyond the twenties at times but his reasons are clear when reading the context. Being a committed Baptist, I would have preferred more meat from that bone rather than the larger Protestant community, and Hankins as a Baptist historian (or at least an historian who is a Baptist) one may have expected him to deliver it. However, such only shows once again Hankins' presentation to be a judicious rendering of a single snapshot of American Christianity during a single decade.
Get the book.
With that, I am…
Peter
Peter,
Thanks for this informative review. This definitely looks like a book I'll want to read.
When I was a student at Louisiana College, Dr. Hankins was one of my history professors. That was my major, but unfortunately the only class I took from him was outside of his field, which appears to be the intersection of fundamentalism, evangelicalism and American culture. As an unbeliever at that time, I was regrettably rather uninterested in studying those kinds of issues.
Within the context of today's SBC, Dr. Hankins would probably be considered to be more on the "moderate" side of the fence, but from what I know of him it might be fair to consider him to be a conservative moderate and a scholar who has no particular axe to grind.
Over the years he has published a number of other books on similar subjects, perhaps most notably for Southern Baptists, "Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservatives and American Culture."
As Dr. Hankins notes, Prohibition and the issue of the liquor trade generally was something that liberals and fundamentalists agreed on, even at a time when denominations, especially in the North, were splitting over theological issues. That's something that probably can't be repeated enough since that fact is likely unfathomable to many today who would just assume that Prohibition was a "fundamentalist" thing. (Of course Catholics and Lutherans were opposed to it, as were a much smaller number of conservative confessional Reformed men in the Machen mold. Most Presbyterians however were as supportive of Prohibition as Baptists and Methodists were.)
The religious liberals of that day, influenced by Darwinism and German Higher Criticism, thought that much of the Bible was a myth, but they most certainly wanted to maintain what they saw as Christian morality. But of course having discarded the Bible as their ultimate authority, their rationale for upholding what they considered to be Christian morality basically amounted to traditionalism and and perhaps especially their assumptions about the inevitable progress of civilization. The two World Wars shattered the illusions about the latter, and mere traditionalism isn't going to last long, especially in a democratic society.
The religious liberals of today by contrast have little or no interest in upholding traditional mores. Moralism of course will save no one, but I think it's important to note this difference between the religious liberalism of 100 years ago and today.
Although I don't know that it would necessarily have much to do with the culture wars, I also wonder if he makes any mention of the rise of what is termed New Thought teaching. Things like "The Secret" that become wildly popular from time to time are basically carbon copies of the blatantly unbiblical New Thought teaching that was in vogue in the early part of the last century. The Word-Faith/prosperity gospel movement is heavily influenced by it as well.
Regarding anti-Catholicism, does he dwell much on the revival of the KKK during that period, a time in which by most accounts it reached the height of its influence?
Posted by: Chris Poe | 2010.12.18 at 12:58 AM