evangelicals in american politics. we'll hear about henry ward beacher, prohibition and the 18th amendment, and the u.s. supreme court abortion case, roe versus wade. this is about an hour and a half. >> good evening and welcome to the university, and our first of a series of three forums on balances pie etty and pragmatism, evangelicals and politics. we appreciate you all being with us this evening. we thank you for the opportunity that we have here at bob joons university to learn more about our civic responsibilities and the great nation you have blessed us to be a part of. we pray for our nation. we pray for our elected leaders,

for president obama particularly as he leads this nation, that you might grant him wisdom and your sovereign hand might be directing the decisions he makes. we think of tragedies that have happened recently, attacks, and life of many citizens, we pray you would protect a life i pray that those of us who know you would live godley lives. i pray we would do that for your glory. we pray now that you would bless this discussion tonight that we might learn something that would make us more effective citizens. we ask this in christ's name, amen. before i introduce this evening's panelist, i want to take a few minutes and set the context and purpose for tonight's discussion it's my opinion that believers or evangelicals should engage in

political activity on the basis of their faith commitments. i hold this opinion for a couple reasons opinion scripture assumes that a follower of christ will seek opportunities for influence. god instructs his people who are in exile to seek the peace or welfare of the city where i've caused you to be carried away as captives. and pray unto the lord for it. the peace or welfare there of shall you have peace. it's natural for evangelicals to seek out people and social institutions including government. because we see that in scripture. evangelicals engage in political activity as an outgrowth of their faith.

evangelicals see themselves as citizens of two kingdoms, an earthly one and a heavenly one. we have responsibilities we render unto ceasar the things that are ceasars and seek those things which are above. as we carry out responsibilities in this earthly kingdom, we do so as followers of christ. the involvement of evangelicals in american politics should could come as no surprise. knowing the most appropriate ways to call out this influence is not always straightforward. sadly, evangelicals have not always exercised this responsibility and wisdom, and in meekness. sometimes we're so enamored with the political power of this world, we become in the words of cal thomas and ed dobson,

blinded by might. in an era where evangelicals are increasingly pressured to keep their faith to their private life christians must understand how to carry out their civic responsibilities in meekness and wisdom. it's my hope that tonight's forum will accomplish two ends. first, i hope your understanding of how evangelicals have engaged in the american experiment of self-government will be expanded. and i hope we'll glean lessons from the missteps that are instructive for our lives today. our format tonight is simple. after i introduce our panelists, i'll ask them questions, and following those questions, we'll take time to answer some from the audience. if you're interested in asking a question, be sure you get a card from one of our volunteers, if you've not already done that. if you don't have one, maybe you can slip your hand up quickly. one of our volunteers who are here tonight can get you one of those cards.

tonight we have the privilege of hearing from four distinguished panelists, each bringing a unique perspective to our topic. let me introduce each one of them to you. first of all carl abrams, who is on your far left. i don't mean anything political by that. i can assure you. dr. carl abrams, professor of modern and european history. he's freak wently sought as an expert on modern culture. he's written two books and conservative constraints. north carolina and the new deal. dr. abrams holds three degrees in history. a ba from bob jones university. an ma from north carolina state

university. and a ph.d. from the university of maryland. in addition, he studied at tieds and harvardy vinity school. dr. jim guth who is on your far right is the william r. ken an junior political science. he served as fuhrman's chair as the chair of the political science department. he initiated an intern program which has sent over 1,000 students to washington. as a specialist in american politics, he assessed the impact of religion on the electoral process and public policy in the clinton, bush and obama administrations. dr. guth holds a bachelor of science from the university of wisconsin and a ph.d. from harvard, university. and then in our center left we

have dr. tom mack, who joins our forum tonight from cedarville university, where he is the assistant vice president of academics, professor of history and director of cedarville's honors program. he teaches courses in united states history and world view integration. his research area is 19th century america, especially the political history of the american civil war and the guilded age. he was selected to attend the american history seminar on the guilded age sponsored by the guilded lariman institute of history and the council of independent colleges hosted by stanford university. his research includes the role of ohio and its politicians in national politics during the 19th century. he holds a ba from cedarville university. ma from cleveland state university, and ph.d. from the university of akron. and finally. center right kellan funk.

he's a ph.d. his area of focus is 19th century american legal institutions. the development of the legal profession. the debates over the codification of the common law. and the interintersection of american law and american christianity. he recently assumed the position of law clerk for chief judge lee rosenthal at the u.s. district court for the southern district of texas. he's received legal history fellowships from yale law school, the hearst institute. the american society for legal history, and also received a religious history fellowship from the center for the study of profession at the university of princeton. he holds a ba from bju, and a

j.d. from yale law school. would you please welcome our panelists for tonight's discussion. [ applause ] >> we're going to begin tonight with a simple question, i think definitions are important. i'm going to direct this question to kellen and ask him to define what an ivevangelical is. how would you distinguish evangelicals from other religious groups? >> thank you for inviting me. thank you for the question, and hopefully we'll have about two minutes after i've answered it to have the rest of the panel. it does seem like air simple question. by defining the term we're going to be talking about for this panel.

it is also a cruel question. historians debate rather furiously what evangelical means and who that label applies to. part of the reason for that is the word evangelical didn't have much meaning until the 20th century. clearly the evangelicals had their roots going back further. there were movements and groups in the 18th and 19th centuries. as piotious. lots of new revivalists. which had all different personalities and theologyists and aims and thinking about reform and politics. clearly, there were emphasis and

strands and things held in common among these groups. historians debate whether the term evangelicalism is appropriate for these groups. so one historian named david bebing ton has offered four emphasis that mark what an evangelical is. and these criteria, nobody agrees with, everyone disagrees over whether these are actual emphasis, whether all four go together or there should be more than four. probably other panelists will want to disagree with it. but because everyone talks about it, it's a convenient benchmark to start with. so the four qualities that mark an evangelical. the first is -- as he calls it, biblicism. a high regard for the authority

and sufficiency of the bible. the second he calls centrism. which is a fancy way of saying the cross. and the theology of the atonement is central to evangelical identity. the third is conversion. the emphasis that individuals ought to be choosing belief and obedience in the gospel. the fourth category is activism. it means especially that the belief and conversion ought to change a person's life. and that a person ought to be active in changing their life, because they have converted and believe the gospel. these are the four emphasis that are suggested to zee fine an

evangelical. and i should emphasize that they are emif a says. the point is not that evangelicals are the only christians who think the bible . but these are supposed to be the things that are at the center of evangelical identity as opposed to what a lot of 19th century historians would call liturgicals. as opposed to evangelicals. which don't so much emphasize going out and converting people the way revivalists did and more interested in the sacramental part of the church, gathering around the sacraments and raising up family in the church and not so much going out doing the sort of soul winning that the evangelicals are talking

about. so let me sort of sketch the timeline from the 19th century to now and let me fill in more of the definition and hopefully that sets the stage for us. basically in the 19th century, when you're thinking about evangelical involvement in politics, you find the people that historians would call evangelicals basically on every side of every issue, on every side of every political party, maybe, maybe there are arguable emphases we'll get to, but they're sort of everywhere. there are evangelicals that support reform, there are those that oppose. there are evangelicals that are very ardently anti-slaverly and one that defend the institution of slavery. there are ones that are democrats, and republicans and wigs and populists and the whole

litany of parties that went through the 19th century. but there are certain generalizations you can make. and they tended to run along denominational lines. where baptist evangelicals along with some of the liturgicals, catholics, almost reliablely vote democratic from jackson into the late 19th century democratic party for reasons we can get into. while methodist and presbyterian evangelicals, congregationalists and some of the more respectable liturgicals at that time, the episcopalian, maybe lutheran and dutch reform fairly reliablely vote for the wig party and later involved in the republican party after the demise of the wigs. that's a very different story from what happens in the 20th century. in the 20th century, it's no

longer that you can sort of divide evangelicals along denominational lines and sort of figure out who's politically active where and who's voting for whom. after the rise of liberal theology and the fundamentalist modernist controversy, at the fundamentalist movement gets started, it's attracting people from across the denominational boundaries. so that, for instance, a methodist fundamentalist found a school that has a lot of presbyterian fundamentalists on staff and a lot of baptist fundamentalists attending as students. and what happens -- anyone know the school i'm talking about? what happens is people realize very often they have more in common with other fundamentalists across the denominational divide than they have with people in their own

denomination. and over the course of the 20th century what starts to happen is the same -- that crosses denominational boundaries, culturally and socially with these different movements, also starts to happen politically where conservative evangelicals all sorts are together on one side of the political spectrum in a way that hadn't at all been true of evangelicals in the 19th century. this is -- this thesis is sort of broadly referred to as the restructuring of american religion, which is a coin termed by a sociologist at princeton. so briefly that leads me to define one more distinction, hopefully the stage is then set. what then is the difference between a fundamentalist and evangelical for purposes of this

discussion? the historian of american religion george marsden, humorously defines a fundamentalist as an evangelical who is angry about something. which he made that humorously but it's a helpful definition in that it points to the fact that fundamentalists are, if you're thinking through the historical label of evangelicalism, the four emphases, basically a subset of evangelicalism that has this added point of militancy. that fundamentalists were especially dedicated for taking a stand for the gospel for those four emphases. and willing to sum der ties with the liberal theologians that they felt threatened those emphases, and also with other evangelicals who were not severing ties with the

theologians. so the term evangelicalism actually comes into history around the 1950s when it's used by people like billy graham and carl henry, the editor of "christianity today." and they were using the term evangelical to sort of distance themselves from that militancy point. sometimes people refer to this as new evangelicalism. i don't know that that title is very helpful or has any meaning because really evangelicalism and fundamentalism are both new in the 1950s in significant ways in the same way they're also very old in the 1950s in significant ways. but what happens from that point onward is these different groups, fundamentalists and evangelicals often use the labels to make sure you know they're not the other one. even though they all share the four emphases i mentioned of what historically marks evangelicals. now bring the story up to today.

the political media and political pollsters have no kind of patience for this nuance, right? there is no breakdown in polls between how fundamentalists vote and evangelicals vote and where pe p pent costals. describe politically conservative christianity of any kind. and often that term is used interchangeably, to talk about evangelicals, to talk about fundamentalists, even to talk about conservative roman catholics in the 19th century would not at all fit the category as historians use it. so a very long and meandering way to say i have not given you a precise definition because history does not give us a precise definition. but i think that's part of the helpfulness and usefulness of starting with a panel on the past and having these panelists

here to think through what the change over time is, where the decisions are and why they matter to what's going on right now. thank you again for inviting me. i'm looking forward to hearing from the other panelists. >> as i said what seems to be a simple question, historical perspective is a little bit complicated. and kellen in his answer invited some discussion on this. i want to throw out this next question perhaps to the entire panel whoever might want to jump on it. i think kellen suggested his answer to the question. but when did evangelicals become recognized as a political force or as a political movement historically in the united states? can we point to a particular time when either a historian or political scientist have said that evangelicals should be recognized as some sort of a political force or some sort of a political movement?

anybody? >> i would just add from a working definition to simplify what kellen just laid out for us for fundamentalists in the 1920s and '30s, they had a very simple way as well of communicating what they meant. and they would talk about believing in supernatural christianity. that very quickly got to what they really were all about, which would include what kevin just elaborated on, and one other thing that they would ad , some of them, i don't agree with them, but some would add pre-millennialism. there was a big debate between is militants the answer or pre-millennialism. is that what they're all about? so there were other sort of shorthand words that were used. to get to your question, i would argue that -- and i was surprised by this, it's a very

odd source to start with, but famous democracy in america, when he came to america in the 1830s and then went back and wrote his book, one of the biggest impressions he had about america was the importance of religion that he saw in americans. and the way he elaborated on it was in a very positive way that religion, and he called it as it was translated, traditional religion, which suggests maybe evangelicalism, he's not using that word obviously. but traditional religion. and it made americans less selfish. it made them more civic-minded. it neutralized individualism. it made them better citizens across the board.

and so for someone to foreigners wlo come to america and recognize that there's something traditional and different about american religion, maybe the 1830s is a little early, but he saw something. even if americans were not conscious of that identity, he was aware of it, apparently for them. and when you think about what's going on politically, he was here during the jacksonian presidency. and despite that he still saw some very positive things about religion. >> so you're adding more precisely to what kellen said that an evangelical would be somebody who believes in the supernatural, the new birth specifically, contrasted with perhaps somebody of a mainline christian denomination. that that's a distinguishing characteristic of an

evangelical. tom, i want to point the next question to you. we're going to trace this a bit historically now through the u.s. and tom's expertise as i mentioned in the introduction is in 19th century u.s. history. so how did evangelicals of the 19th century involve themselves in politics and what were perhaps some of the significant social or political issues that were important to them, perhaps even some of the key figures that were involved? >> there's a lot i could talk about. i want to focus on the time dr. abrams raised and that is the 1820s, '30s and '40s. in that time we see awakening, and i want to take a moment to talk about the theological roots of the second grade awakening. they are many and they are varied. i guess it goes to the breadth of evangelicals. some argue there's a link going

back to the theology of jonathan edwards. i think there's some compelling evidence that that's correct. edwards, well, there's a lot to edwards theology and i don't pretend to be an expert on it, but i know he focused on a key phrase that human beings have a natural ability but moral inability. and by that he meant that human beings have the natural ability to do anything. they can sin, they can do positive things and good works, but their struggle is in their will, their motive. and only god can correct that. the reason that that's significant is the influence that that had not only at the time because he was addressing concerns about antignomism, his response to that was soon after you come to know christ, after your justification, you have to live out the faith. it must be evident in how you live your life. and he was also responding to armenianism which suggest gave far too much credit to the role of the individual in the justification process. kellen referred to one of the

many news he referenced and the new divinity is the next generation that include people like bellamy and hopkins and edmondays ae edmonds and a number of others. they talked about something called disinterested benevolence. in it what they suggest is that in order to really demonstrate that you understand who god is, that you have an appreciation for who he really is, you demonstrate love simply because of who he is, not because he's going to save you or prevent you from going to hell or bless you in this world -- this earthly life but simply because you recognize who he is. he would teach love comes before faith and new divinity theologians took that one step further and said in your christian life you should do good works but then introduce it as disinterested benevolence. you don't do good, for you, you

do it for the love of god the benefit somebody else receives from it and that to me epitomizes a great deal of the impact of the second grade awakening. i'll hasten to add there's much more in terms of theological strains. certainly a more of a focus on the role of the human being in the justification process, the ability to choose, to accept, to believe. for many it was relieving the anxiety trying to figure out am i part of the predestined, those chosen by god. there's a perfectionism strain which is really coming out of methodism. sometimes referred to as entire sanctify kags, belief that after justification you can arrive at a state of relative perfection. for the second grade awakeners, that meant doing good works, benevolence, trying to improve society. and then you'll see the logical step to the third area which is millennialism, the belief the church is bringing in the kingdom of god. and for some of them, we'll get to this later perhaps, a belief that this nation is a chosen

nation of god to help bring in that millennium, this nation being the united states, which is an interesting topic and runs through a lot of the country's history. of course revivalism is the method then. so that's sort of the framework out of the second grade awakening. so it's interesting and gets to your question which is how do they get involved politically. well, second grade launched what is sometimes rerveed to benevolent empire. you see individuals like charles finney and his disciple of theodore dwight focused on things like temperance. you see henry beacher, all of them were involved and particularly lineman were involved in temperance but going to be involved in trying to improve the american society we live in with a goal of bringing god's law to bear in the community in which they live. that manifested itself in things that i already talked about, temperance, prison and asylum

reform, even in education reform. their goal is to create a better society. what i think is intriguing for -- coming from this time period because i think as you listen to him you'll see how much they apply to our current moment. finney said this, social and political involvement, the promotion of public and private order and happiness is one of the indispensable means of saving souls. so in his mind improving society wasn't just bringing the kingdom or wasn't just benevolence works but creating an atmosphere in which the gospel could go forth. the social and political involvement following the second grade awakening, it was driven by the gospel. and secondly this one is more telling for our time period, i think, this is from henry cowles. men are put in nomination for president, how few -- he's talking about the voters, how few care to inquire whether they are licentious or not, for

virtue or no virtue, moral purity or no moral purity. it is a small affair for most voters. it's intriguing because i think evangelicals in this time period they would reflect upon the character of the presidential candidate. and it's a question i think is coming up quite a bit in our current election. >> very helpful. and, carl, if you could extend from that moving into the 20th century. again, what we're -- how did evangelicals involve themselves in the early 20th century in the political scene? and what were some of the key issues or methods of political involvement that we saw among evangelicals? >> i think probably the most obvious one is prohibition, getting the 18th amendment. it's almost like if you think about it rationally, it's such a bizarre story. and you could get three-fourths of the states to stop the

manufacture and sell of alcoholic beverages. but it happened with the 18th amendment. the key there and i think this is part of the historical misunderstanding, people think it's just billy sunday and evangelicals, but it really wasn't. the mainstream thinking of the day. again, you sort of have to use your historical imagination and get back into the early 20th century. most americans thought alcohol and drunkenness was a problem. it wasn't just evangelicals. business people didn't like it because it affected the health of their workers, problems with absenteeism and so forth. and the violence that came with it. if you think about things like, i think in new york city in the

year 1900 there were 10,000 saloons chr saloons, which we now call bars. so alcohol was such a big problem that evangelicals actually were part of middle america and getting the political support to get that amendment passed. the problem came in the 1920s when you tried to what was called the noble experiment to enforce it. enforcement was the problem. or they thought it was the problem. and there i think a lot of the evangelicals and the fundamentalists lost that broad base of support, which you would need to sustain it. but there's also, i think this is more sort of counterintuitive. something maybe i discovered several years ago if you look in the '20s and '30s, evangelicals are slowly becoming the greatest supporters of american jews.

and not just in america but also in places like germany, and it shouldn't be that strange because most are familiar through missionaries and also through the periodicals familiar with the plight of the jews, i think evangelicals are more aware of it than most americans are aware of it at the time. and sadly some of the support is not because they are enlightened on racial views. unfortunately many evangelicals were anti-semitic. there were a coup especially, but that's dying down. what really generates a lot of the enthusiasm and support for jews is the idea that israel has to be rebuilt.

it's part of pre-millennialism. it's part of their es pitology. think about this, it's before 1948, the prophesy that there will be an israel. and then when that's done in that timetable, christ will return. so part of the enthusiastic support for the jews is to help facilitate that timetable, so let's protect them, let's help them and zionism is popular among evangelicals at a time when it's not generally known about or strongly supported. >> well, let's move now toward the mid 20th century and perhaps late 20th century. and for some of us it's a little bit interesting to be talking about that from a historical perspective because some of us actually lived this time period.

so how did evangelicals in the mid 20th century perhaps to the late 20th century thinking to the 1980s, how did evangelicals involve themselves in politics and social issues at that time? perhaps who were some of the key figures involved in that era? >> okay. well, moving right along as we say over time, if you think there's a lot of discussion as kellen pointed out about how to find out evangelicals among scholars, the rule of evangelical involved in politics beginning in the '60s and '70s and especially into the 1980s with the so-called new christian right is subject to a great deal of disagreement. what was it -- or who was it and what was it that brought evangelicals into the political process? there's a little saying among those of us who study religion in politics that if you have four political scientists in a room and ask them that question, they'll be at least nine

different answers on what actually did it. i'm going to give you very briefly some of the answers the scholars have suggested. unfortunately, people tend to be monocausal, they tend to see one factor as being the prime or the definitive answer to why evangelicals became more involved in american politics, especially in the '70s and the 1980s with the appearance of christian right organizations of all sorts. one of the first and actually it's a little bit before this period is a theory that's has a lot of support from a few historians and some political scientists, and i guess i might summarize this by the labeling theory, the cold war did it. that especially the confrontation between the united states and the soviet union, the godless communist is something that really got conservative christians concerned about the

future of the united states and the future of the world. and that period we saw the appearance of a whole series of organization like just to name one fred schwartz christian anti-communism crusade. i mention that because i used to go to the crusade meetings when they appeared in milwaukee, wisconsin, near where i lived. and it was -- those meetings were attended by a lot of conservative christians. and there are a variety of other organizations as well. some historians see this as an extension to the mccarthy idea era of the early 1950s. and some journalists have revived the notion richard hofstetter put forward that evangelicals especially but other christians as well had kienld of a paranoid style. they saw enemies everywhere especially the soviet union was very clearly an important enemy both religiously and

politically. and some people are arguing that paranoid style is appearing again among americans, especially among some religious groups. they use that to explain, for example, the level of evangelical support that donald trump has had. now the enemy is islam or perhaps mexicans or perhaps immigrants from elsewhere, but in any case the notion is that somehow it's defining an opponent that has really activated evangelicals over the years. sometimes it's the enemies of israel, carl pointed out though how important israel was in the political thinking in the 1940s and 1950s. and i remember in my little church in wisconsin back in the 1950s how excited everybody was with these establishment in the state of israel and how much that got -- in fact, i started watching a program called "report from the u.n." in the early 1950s because it was

always dealing with the arab-israeli crisis in one way or another. that's one theory. and this is -- again, this goes back to the old blind man and the elephant, you know. or maybe the blind scholars and the elephant, but the trunk is the cold war did it. and here the attack on the christian schools did it. in the 1960s there was proliferation in many parts of the country, not just the south but elsewhere of christian schools. and beginning in the carter administration the irs began to investigate many of these schools determining whether or not they were simply segregation academies, as the phrase went. and the carter administration and later the reagan administration took steps to withdraw tax exemptions. everybody here is very familiar with that effort. and a lot of scholars argue that that was really sort of the

tripping point for the creation of new christian right organizations. and there's some truth to that. a lot of the early christian right organizations were filled with which i say chan school administrators and others who had some kind of stake in christian education. so another piece if you will. a lot of scholars go a different direction. this might be familiar, it was really roe versus wade in 1973. that was a motivating force for a great many evangelicals to get involved. in politics. of course evangelicals weren't the first to move on that. the catholic church reacted much faster and with much more force initially. but over time evangelicals did respond and respond in great numbers. and by the 1980s of course the issue of abortion become a major one matter of concern to a great

many conservative christians and it's remained so to the present day. another theory, it's kind of related to the third one is it's really the sexual revolution of the 1960s that were most important factors mobilizing evangelicals. indeed in the '60s on there's a steady increase in local organizations all over the country that deal with issues, addressing issues of controlling pornography, trying to prevent prostitution, prohibit ordinances recognizing gay rights and of course more recently we've had mobilization against same-sex marriage and things like that. a lot of scholars see abortion as part of this. this final theory that i will mention, and that is the republican party -- that the republican party and the late

1970s and 1980s were activists associated -- saw great potential constituents among christians, one that lowered level of voting turnout that other shared and certainly social values that could be activated by republican politicians and that republican activists and officials rather cynically in minds of most of these scholars used evangelical protestants as cannon fodders in the electoral wars with the democrats. i think each of these theories has some truth to it. and if you look at each of them, you find that some evangelicals were concerned with each of these sets of issues. there are some others as well. but i think the basic underlying factor is not even the strategy of republican politicians which after all have to have something

to work with, but rather the real sense among conservative christians that american culture has really moved away from their values. and i think this is a general feeling that underlies many of these more specific concerns, which are often determined by where you just happen to be at a particular point in time, what local issues are, which things you are most sensitive to. and in one way or another i think the same kinds of concerns underlie some of the contemporary discontempt with the way in which our national institutions are functioning that we're really moving away from or dislocating from the historic values that evangelical christians and others have held to for a great many years. that's a start. we'll get into it a little bit more later on. >> so i think that's a very compelling overview in the time that we have of tracing

evangelical participation in politics going back to the 19th century. so, jim, at the end of your answer you suggested something along the lines i had in mind for my next question and that is, is there a common theme across these many years of evangelical participation in politics? or has it been quite diverse? has there been an ebb and flow to it depending upon the era or the issues that the nation was facing? and how does that relate to affiliation with particular political parties? has there been an ebb and flow to that? what do you all think about that? has there been constancy, a dominant theme in terms of evangelicals and their involvement in politics and social issues? or has there been a significant amount of diverse tiity to that tom? >> i'm interested in

commentings, i agree with them. he was speaking in the 19th century after the segregated awakening we do see among some of the -- those involved in the reform movement as sort of an opinion that the united states is this chosen nation by god to bring progress and democracy and freedom to the world. sort of a continuation the puritan theme of being a model for the rest of the world. if we can be a christian nation and we can demonstrate how a nation ought to function, even to the point of some suggesting, remember great 19th century story george bancroft, portraying history as movement progress towards democracy the great end all of mankind was democracy. and certainly there are a lot of excellent qualities to democracy, but it was almost as if there was this divine appointment for america to head in this direction. and i do think there's a consistency among some

evangelicals through american history of this theme. now, while i would critique it, there's a flip side to that because there is certainly a recognition, we ought to recognize that america is a western civilization, it is certainly predicated upon ju-- certainly we were a country at least influenced by christian thought and biblical principle. and i think evangelicals have latched onto that and rightly wanted to participate in the system and bring biblical principle to bear in the public square. while i might critique the sort of messy an ek view of america, i also realize, hey, my faith ought to have a public outworking and i have the opportunity in democracy to express biblical principle. and since it's truth it would be best for a nation to operate based on it so why don't i pursue it in a public square.

i think there has been some consistency there even as issues change and even as evangelicals ebb and flowed in terms of actual involvement, sometimes they withdraw it, but that has -- there's been some consistency with that i think through time. [ inaudible question ] >> look at some data i've analyzed just recently, ask americans as to whether or not they think the united states has some special sort of role in the world don't mention god or is the united states just like everybody else and just another nation whatever in the world of power politics or whatever the case may be, evangelicals above all other religious groups are still more likely to say that the united states has a special role to play in the world. i can't based on survey data of what they think that role is being, but nevertheless there's

still that special idea that we can be a model or that we have responsibility for what happens in our world. >> so the notion of american exceptionalism -- >> the strongest among the evangelicals. >> right. and i think of ronald reagan and, you know, one of the images or phrases that he was known for was america being that shining city on a hill. that particular notion. kellen, maybe turn to you again on legal matters. among evangelicals today of course there is a lot of focus and concern about court decisions of legal matters, can you tell us about what particular legal issues have been important to evangelicals from a historical perspective?

are there any in particular that stand out to you that would demonstrate that that perhaps is not unique to the day in which we live right now? >> everything. it's my duty to say law is everywhere. that's true in particular the things we've been talking about. you can't really discuss anti-slavery or prohibition or christian schools and tax policy without thinking about the legal dimensions of the legislation, the regulation and court cases that inevitably come out of these types of reform movements. to blend some of this answer with the previous question, as a historian, i'm generally inclined to look at the 19th century as a lost world or a foreign country. they do things different there. and i'm less inclined to see

some of the strong continuities that maybe others are more willing to see. i think church-state relations might be one of those places where the 19th century remains a lost world. and in some ways an undiscovered world. i think one of the most fascinating issues in church state law coming from the 19th century that people don't really recognize today is that churches in early american history looked very much like states. can't go through every denomination so i'll focus particularly on the baptists. the baptists ran their own court system through the mechanism of having church discipline. up until 1820s in kentucky if you were baptist would go to church on sunday and on every other saturday you would meet

for the discipline session. and members would bring forth accusations. they would say brother so and so cursed this week, sister so and so gossiped. the deacons and elders would hear the accusations, they would examine the accused, did you curse, brother so and so, and they would get an admission. and after examining the evidence they would levy fines which would then be paid into the support of the church. if it was a dispute between church members, they would mediate. they would reconcile the parties until the parties were ready to sit down at communion together with each other. and baptist discipline became so famous for its justice and its efficiency that even non-members instead of taking their civil suits over property and contracts to the territorial courts of the united states, would take them to the local baptist church to get adjudication. and would even pay in fines for the support of the churches that

were being run. and so in light of this one of the leading points of evangelical baptist political theology was always the question of jurisdiction. who is best equipped and able and competent to be enacting given social reform or another. and a lot of evangelical -- you know, a lot of evangelicals who were not baptists who were on the wig side working in these benevolent societies were sending in petitions to congress to get things done through congress. a lot of evangelicals on the baptist side were rejecting that kind of approach and saying if you want to get social reform done, the way that you do it is you convert people, bring them into the church and then the church discipline processes will work their way out into temperance or anti-slavery or all these other various reforms that you're trying to get at.

just to briefly survey why these things go away, part of it is american diversity, the diversity of evangelicals that are out there, especially when the di siep disciples of christ kentucky, if you're brother so and so with a cursing problem, you can go next door or sometimes in the same building and worship with the disciples of christ and escape the discipline system. and then it's no longer a matter of evangelicalizing the people because the disciples of christ are evangelicals and people are converted and you have this difficult question of how then do you reach -- what's the proper mechanism for getting social reform across, and that's when you see a lot of evangelicals increasingly turn to states or federal levels of power to try to overcome these problems with exit.

but i would say, you know, that feature of the 19th century of churches as their own site of governance is an important part of the history that i think starts to fade away over time. and it's also especially important for probably the largest subgroup of evangelicals in the country, which is black or african-american evangelicals at this time who are either slaves before the civil war or freed men afterwards, you know, a lot of political engagement of the type that we've been talking about was not open to them until after the civil rights revolution. the type of governance i've just surveyed often was because if you owned your own church, you had your own incorporation. very often black evangelicals who could not sue in their own name in the courts, because they were black, could sue as a church because the church had a legal identity. so the church itself could

collect on debts or enforce property rights that black christians otherwise could not even assert in the courts or assert in the legislature or in these other political arenas. and i think that's an important part of the history of how law and governance have related within evangelical politics over time. >> well, we have focused on the past. and our next forum coming up will focus on the present. but i want us to take a few minutes before we have questions from the audience to think about how this -- the past, how this history relates to the present. so perhaps we can spend a few minutes talking about how the involvement of evangelicals today in politics, whether it be through the legal branch, the legal realm or otherwise, how

involvement today perhaps differs from the past. what would evangelicals of the past be surprised about today in terms of how evangelicals go about their civic responsibilities in the public sphere? who wants to take the first stab at that one? >> i think probably someone like william jennings brian would think he's in a lost century, probably. if you start looking at the profile of who was obviously a fundamentalist hero at the stokes trial, but if you start digging into his background, he is, i think, one of the most fascinating characters which makes us -- drives us to use our, again, our historical imagination to figure it out to how he could be all of these things. he was a pacifist, a fundamentalist, evangelical. he was a progressive, which for that day would be the word

liberal that we would use now. he was anti-imperialist. and how in his mind he could put all those things together. my take on it is that he was probably in terms of es cotology post millennial, so you build -- you reform the world and things get better and better. and then christ comes back after the millennium. and so you engage in all those things, war doesn't work with the millennium, so you have to be anti-war. alcohol doesn't work with the millenniums so you want to get that as a reform. and you do all of these things. so i think just looking at his life is a lesson in how complex evangelicals can be. and i think the non-evangelicals often who look at us, look at us

as monolithic. but we are not. there's great variety, sometimes within the individual even. >> so you would suggest that that complexity even exists today, it may look a little bit different. >> yes. even today, don't in cur 2016 climate, don't expect monolithic views because they're not there, typically. >> tom. >> comments about the baptist church operating with the way it did and in the 19th century, to me it reminded me just about how important the church was in society as an institution. it was an institution of -- that was respected. it was an institution that the church function in a fashion that society appreciated. and, you know, you see other evidences of this in the 19th century as we head towards the civil war era because one of the institutions that ties this country together are the churches. and as they begin to split over the institution of slavery,

those ties that bind the nation together some good work on this topic, begin to break. and henry clay who was a senator from kentucky in the time period said, you know, if the pastors can't get together, how do you expect us politicians, you know, to get along on this issue? and he makes a significant point. certainly clay is no evangelical. his reputation was anything but. but he makes an important point for the time period that resonated with people. and it seems to me if we were to bring some evangelicals from the 19th century to this point in time, they would look at evangelicals today and ask how is it that your faith, what you believe, is impacting how you're looking at these issues? first of all, why isn't the church a major player in the conversation in societal conversation? and second of all, how is it that what you believe allows you to arrive at the position you've come to with regard to whatever political issue you want to

choose. with the second grade awakening most cases they weren't pursuing governmental solution to their problems. they were going out and trying to solve them on their own as private institutions. mr. funk did a nice job of talking about that as an institution, they would react to that but i think more importantly they would ask what is it the bible teaches that allows you to arrive at this conclusion. i think there would be some questions. >> very interesting. >> follow up on something carl was suggesting, and i guess this is not anything is easy to do, but he used the example of prohibition. and one of the things that most of the historical literature talk about what a glorious failure that was in a sense, but if you look at the kinds of evidence about american drink and the social and physical and other ills that were intended on that, that was an obvious target. and i think that tells us that, you know, be careful of obvious

targets. sometimes the obvious target is one you shouldn't shoot at maybe for a variety of reasons. another example coming again on prohibition is only reason it was successful is because of wide cooperation among evangelical protestants and other folks. and sometimes evangelical protestants are not inclined to cooperate with other people from different backgrounds or traditions. and those things kind of, i guess, urge us to be humble about our choices of issues, our choices of allies. we ought to look at our allies and say are these the kinds of allies who we want to be associated with or not. those are tough questions. they're not easy questions. we often think of them as being far too easy. it's something we can just make up our mind, you know. issues are easy targets and who we're going to work with, that's another easy decision to make. and they're not easy decisions.

>> and you have -- i don't mean to cut you off if you had something to say there, kellen. jim, with your response there you have anticipated the question that i wanted to end with before we go to the audience and that is what lessons are there from history for evangelicals today? because my sense is and we can point specifically to the presidential election, we heard a lot of questions among evangelicals because of the -- at least until very recent elections, very strong affiliation with the republican party and almost thein evidentability of voting or supporting the republican candidate. there have been a lot of questions about what to do in this particular presidential election. so all of that to say, what lessons are there from the past

and evangelicals participation in politics for today whether it involves specifically this presidential election or the general political landscape, what lesson should we take from evangelicals and their approach in the past for today? whether that be based upon missteps they've taken in the past or successes that they've taken in the past. what wonderful advice do you have for our audience out here? >> well, i'll start out. as citizens we all make choices. we have to make choices. and we have to evangelicals in recent years have voted republican. about 80% of evangelicals -- white evangelicals have voted republican in the last several presidential elections. which raises, you know, the questions about are you evangelical or are you

republican, or both. but i think one of the real risks that we run is -- we come to see candidates of a particular political party or a particular candidate who we identify as having maybe the right values or right religious affiliation or right set of policy prescriptions, we come to get to close and we identify that candidate with the cause of christ. which i think is a fundamental error in christian politics. >> and with that particular answer and for any students i have out here this probably will come as no surprise to them. i alluded to it earlier in the opening remarks, but if you are a student, if you are a citizen and you have not read cal thomas' book and ed dotson's book, ed dotson by the way being a graduate from here at bob

jones university entitled "blinded by might" and account of leadership roles in the majority in the 1980s, i highly recommend that book to you because they get into this very issue of the tendency among some evangelicals to make involvement in politics and perhaps even supporting particular candidates particularly or seeking particular offices as a form of idolatry. i would highly recommend that book to you. what other lessons? >> at the end of the day some of the basic things we still need to remember. freedom of speech is very important when you think about preaching the gospel. we take it for granted, but the continuity in american history, i think 19th century, 20th century, to today the important issues. and freedom of speech and

religious liberty continuing to focus on that, seems so obvious. >> along those lines the does not protect the right to hold certain beliefs but actually to behave, to act upon them, it deals with the exercising of religion and not just holding a particular belief. so the freedoms afforded in this country, which we would want protected for people of diverse viewpoints is very important. >> i think go back to my previous comment about evangelicals in the 19th century evaluating evangelicals in the 20th or 21st century, i would

think they would want to reassert the role the church once played. and the way that's done is not by following the society or culture, it's by providing something distinctive in the culture. the point i was getting at earlier was maintaining the theological evaluation of the issues that matter in a nation in the 21st century. a lot of students have asked me how do you evaluate candidates in this recent election. if you compare the vote from the previous election, 15%, 17% voted for president obama. most of them voted in favor of him as opposed to anti-romney. recent pugh survey had 15% of what evangelicals would vote for

secretary clinton, 12% said it was an anti-trump vote. i understand that. my perspective, my suggestion to them is you do need to pay attention to what the parties stand for. we have a two-party system in this country for a reason. that doesn't mean the candidates themselves don't matter, but when you've got candidates that have issues on both sides, to put it kindly, problems on both sides, the platforms matter. thankfully we have a system where the president isn't an absolute dictator. there's some boundaries left. and hopefully the parties can help keep them accountable to the platforms they stand on. so there is room to at least consider the platforms and i definitely encourage people to vote even when they're frustrated. >> yeah. as i listen to what you have to say, tom, i think that we have an era of party-centered politics that shifted more to candidate-centered politics. and today i would suggest that we've probably moved toward a

culture-centered politics. so the whole notion of the importance of party i think is really good advice. >> kellen, sounds like you have the last word, at least for this part. >> as an officer of a federal court, i'm thankfully relieved at being able to say anything about present politics. so i'll go back to the -- >> we appreciate that disclaimer. >> so here's the neat thing about the 19th century. some of the legal issues that we've talked about with anti-slavery and temperance and the decision of whether these sorts of reforms can be carried out through evangelicalism and church discipline or whether you need some kind of state mechanism in order to reach them, the reason a lot of evangelicals in the 19th century turned to the state mechanisms in the cases in which they're successful, there's often a very clear anti-slavery logic behind

the turn to politics that one of the reasons, the sort of baptist argument you go out and evangelize and discipline people in the church, that failed first and foremost with slavery was because slavery was such a totalizing system. you could not go evangelize the slaves without the permission of the slave master. and you even have a hard time evangelizing the slave master with all of the restrictions that were put on the mails with all the difficulties of travel after gradual emancipation. and so if you were a good evangelical in massachusetts that felt guilty about the sin of slavery in your country because you recognized your clothes were manufactured through slave labor, your industry was funded and your tariffs were all supported by slave labor, there wasn't

anything you could do to reach that even through evangelical means. and this is sort of the formation of an anti-slavery politics to find a way that can cure this problem of exit. that people can always leave and go find a church that will support what they're doing. and if you look at the other regulations that grow out of evangelical reform in the 19th century, the ones that are most successful follow on the same logic, which is prohibition is likened to a slave holder, that alcohol is the slave master. and you can never actually appropriately reach someone with the gospel if they are enslaved to alcohol and never have that capacity for choice that was talked about earlier, you know, arising in the second grade awakening and in the theology of edwards. and prostitution, anti-gambling measures follow along the same logic. and so people often have the

misimpression that the 19th century was this time when christians in america were just making the law of god the law of the land and that's just how it worked and that's what christians were doing and ought doing. there were quite a lot of sins that don't end up in the legislature. adulatory. blasphemy. they were regulated in the colonial era but fell off the board in the 19th century, partly because they don't have the anti-slavery logic to them. if you admit adulatory it's evidence that you have choice. you are making poor choices, you have that volition, you are not enslaved. so there tonight need to be politics or a law to free you fra somethi from something. you need to stop making bad choices. the others, gambling, slavery, prosecution are tied to

metaphorical slavery through addiction or literal through slave-holding. that there is to be a temporal power to break the chains in order for the gospel to go out. the question is how much of that sort of logic hung on into the 20th and 21st century or what is is the logic that drives evangelical reform is a question i get to ask without answering. thank you. >> all right. we will take some questions from the audience. so if you can pass them to the aisles. we'll have individuals pick them up. we'll take ten or 15 minutes to answer some of these questions.

>> all right. we'll start with this particular question. it was one that i thought might come up. and that is, why do you believe evangelical political groups like the moral majority and christian coalition were so strong at one point and then headed into virtual extinction. i think dr. guth might be a good person to start an answer there. >> well, i think there are several answers to that. the first answer is that they were too personality centered. they were started by fallwell, robertson. and personality centered organizations usually don't survive the political or the real demise of the founder. it's very hard to make that sociological transition from first generation to second

generation leadership. all those organizations also, because of their association with recognized leaders of particular segments of the visibling community didn't have much attraction for the other segments of the evangelical community. jerry fallwell attract the baptist bible fundamentalists. had lots of people on his mailing list but it really never was much of an organization nationally. pat robertson attracted mostly penal pentecostals and didn't extend far in any other direction. it tends to be a pattern. since these organizations depend on the voluntary subscriptions of individuals and contributions of individuals, one of the things that many of these organizations, like organizations on the left, have to do is take relatively extreme positions in order to raise money. we know that direct mail fund-raising, for example, tends

to emphasize divisive, highly combustible kind of rhetoric. and, if you do that, you are going to limit your appeal across the broader community. and also, you're likely to wear out your welcome even with the enthusiasts who initially support you. there are a whole variety of things like that. if you are doing that, by the way, you also tend to attract the hostile attention of the media and groups on the other side of the political spectrum, and that's not usually helpful either. >> very good. >> dr. guth mentioned the court case roe v wade as motivation for some evangelicals. could other liberal supreme court decisions be thought to have similar effects such as prayer and bible reading decisions of the 1960s or just a similar liberal court blanket

idea? >> why are you all looking at me? [ laughter ] >> so, one of the fascinating things about the school prayer and bible reading decisions in the 1960s is that this was -- these were actually a pair of decisions that evangelicals were in fact all over the map on. part of that just has to do with the particulars of the case. so the prayer that was struck down in the 1960-some year school prayer decision was this written-out, prescribed prayer in new york. so it wasn't a spontaneous, from the heart prayer that teachers were permitted to offer. it was this sort of card they read to the benevolent creator of life that was not prayed in the name of jesus or anything. when the supreme court struck it down, carl mcintyre, chief of fundamentalists at the time, rejoiced and said, this was no

prayer at all, get this out of the schools and we don't need to have it. the tide swiftly turned when the same sort of logic was then applied to striking down bible reading. which, again, was very restricted in most schools where it was reading a passage, often of the king james bible, without no -- or comment, was supposed to be how it was implemented. if any of you remember bible reading in the schools, your memory may vary on how it was carried out in different l localities. there were evangelicals debated on whether that worked, whether it actually constituted an act of worship or not. though it tended to be that conservative evangelicals, and in this case carl mcintyre was not a fan of the decision because unlike the regents

prayer in new york the bible is in fact the bible and the word of god, so that did mobilize evangelicals, i think, probably more than roe v wade would. that one tended to have consequences that rolled out later down the road, but justice black, who was instrumental in these 1960s opinions was receiving hundreds of death threats a day from people upset about these decisions, and then also just lots of critical mail from evangelicals who didn't necessarily commit death threats. but mailing anything to the supreme court is incredibly rare. they do not get mail. so to get hundreds of letters about a decision every day was unimimaginable before it happened. >> i lived in massachusetts at the time of the decision, and the bible read there in the public schools was the dewey version of the bible. so catholics were reading their

own version. and i have done some work on the public support or opposition to that. and evangelicals were not very distinctive. mainline protestants and catholics -- everybody was opposed in terms of the mass public. i am not sure how much it distinguished evangelicals from other christians at that time. i have a little bit more nuanced view, i think, on how much it really got things going. >> we've got several good questions here. here is a very, very thoughtful one. to make us stop and think. how essential should we view freedom of religion and freedom of speech to the vitality of american evangelicalism given that the greatest growth of christianity is growing in countries where those freedoms

are non-existent. tom or carl, want to dive in on that one? [ laughter ] >> there is no question that persecution, god works in lands of persecution to prosper his church. my view on this has always been that the american church and the liberties that it has has allowed it to evan jellize and share the gospel in ways that the persecuted church cannot. it's to our detriment that we have not valued the freedoms that we have in ways that have allowed the church to grow and prosper the way we see in some persecuted countries. but i think we have to be good stewards of what we have at the moment. it's difficult for me to

encourage the church to sit by and watch as freedoms dissipate and not seek to prevent that from happening because of the benefits that they do provide to us in sharing the gospel, not only here but around the world. so i get the point. absolutely. god works in all circumstances and, remarkably, in times of persecution. but i would pray that the american church do what it ought to be doing even in time of freedom and liberty and as that day -- as those freedoms seem to be closing in on us, with the opportunities -- i am a big believer in the concept that, in a republican system which we have, the dictates the scripture about the role of government in some ways apply to us. if romans 13 suktggests, for example, that we have a role in justice, a role in our government, there is a certain stewardship responsibility for us to maintain what the

governing documents maintain which is the constitution and maintains the opportunity for us to have religious liberty. it's a stewardship responsibility that i think scripture gives to us. >> it's a thoughtful question, though perhaps based upon your answer it's almost implying a false choice between the two involved there. >> i would just add, probably, the best answer would be a theological one, not necessarily a political one that it's something that we -- this generation doesn't want to hear but there is grace in suffering, and going through the experience of suffering, religious persecution, can be a means of grace, which would allow you by god's grace to be more fervent in your practice of religion. >> and in an evangelical world view, god's power far surpasses

any human power in terms of limitations that might be artificially placed upon the gospel. >> yeah. so you look at church history and you see good examples. >> mm-hmm. >> first century onward. >> mm-hmm. has the philosophy of mills of utilitarianism adversely affected the development of evangelical political values? did the greatest good argument allow evangelicals to ignore the moral failings of candidates that they support? i think this gets into the theme of these forums of balancing piety and pragmatism. does pragmatism play a role in an evangelical's participation as a citizen of two different kingdoms? quick comment. not a complete thought.

matthew 10 refers to being wise as serpents and gentle as doves. this institution involves human beings who have fallen. there will not be perfect solutions. we are put in a solution where we have to make difficult choices. sometimes we have to use shrewdness. i use that word other than compromise but our political system is predicated on the notion of compromise. the challenge as christians is to recognize that there are some absolute principles upon which we are not willing to compromise. that makes being involved in the system rather challenging for us. my grandfather used to say moderation in everything. it's not a biblical principle. but a -- there is some application to our political system. we have to make difficult choices or completely remove ourself from the system. and i don't find that -- i find that challenging with regard to biblical principle and applying it to our lives.

so, sometimes that means voting for individuals that we know are fallen. [ chuckling ] >> i think in the history of evangelicals, something remarkable happened in the 20s, a lot of evangelicals as fundamentalists were very, very anti-catholic. and by the late 1930s, they figured something out and the catholics figured something out so that they had a common enemy, it was communism. this was before the cold war. so the common denominator of anti-communism drove fundamentalists and catholics to work together, people that would not a decade before would speak to each other. so, in the greater good of fighting something that was anti-religious and atheistic and

violent, the differences between the two different types of christians didn't seem quite as important. >> i think it's been a theme throughout history of evangelicals in christian ministry guarding the purity of the gospel but then looking for areas where there might be cooperation, appropriate cooperation, in societal kinds of issues. it would be somewhat easy to end right now since we really only have two minutes left, but this is a really good question. and maybe it's a little bit of a dicey one to end on. can you comment on the term "liberalism"? what is religious liberalism? is it the same as political liberalism? are the two related? you have 30 seconds. [ laughter ]

>> anybody want to tackle that question? >> i will try to give an empirical answer to it. religious liberalism is, of course, a phenomenon we're probably familiar with. it's deviation from traditional orthodoxy, if you will. is it related to political liberalism? it's not the same thing, but is it related? yes, it is, in american politics. religious liberals are more likely to be political liberals, as we conventionally define those terms. now, the connection is not always clear. why it is a particular set -- political choices. it may be that they simply go together because they represent some underlying bigger phenomenon of liberalism of all sorts, if you will. but in one part of the restructuring that kellen talked about before is the conformity

of religious orthodoxy with more conservative political positions and religious liberalism with more liberal political positions as conventionally defined. there are lots of people who violate those rules but those are what we call central tendencies in political science. >> anything to add, kellen? >> i would say you can have a similar discussion about the word conservative and whether there has been a conflation of conservative theology with conservative politics, and if there actually is a necessary logical relation between them. the history of evangelicalism in the 19th century was that there wasn't necessarily a relation between those two. as we heard with william jennings bryan who had very different conservative views politically even though he was conservative theologically. where was i going with this?

[ chuckling ] so i guess that is one question of history that moves from the 19th century into the 20th century, is how did it become the way that a conservative theology would become tied to what at the time was known as a conservative politics. >> kellen, you get the last word for us this evening. we -- would you please join me in thanking our panelists. [ applause ] i want to thank each one of you for being here tonight. i encourage you to come back october the 13th at 7:00 right here on stratton hall for the next panel on the focus of the present. the panelists we will have, linda abrams, a professor here.

charles dunn who i believe is here tonight who is a retired professor from clemson university, also regent university and grove city college and finally danielle vincent, a professor at furman. thank you for being here tonight. tonight, a symposium on the battles of gettysburg and teatam and the siege of vicksburg. american history tv in prime time begins at 8:00 p.m. eastern.

c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. historian and author elizabeth cobbs talks about the women who served overseas as telephone operators in the u.s. army signal corps during world war i. the national archives in washington, d.c., hosted this event. it's just under an hour. after the united states entered world war i. women as well as men eagerly volunteered to serve their country. though women were prohibited from joining the army or navy they found ways to contribute. often taking up jobs once performed by men now going overseas. one gro