Doctrine and Race

Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews situates Doctrine and Race at the intersection of several currents that defined the United States in the early twentieth century: (1) the rise of Protestant Christian fundamentalism in response to such theological “modernisms” as the social gospel and human evolution; (2) America's involvement in World War I to establish democracy around the world; and (3) the virulent racism that motivated bloodthirsty lynch mobs. Mathews asserts that fundamentalism was not primarily about race, but she nevertheless argues that leading white fundamentalists were imbued with the notion that African Americans were highly impressionable and easily misled. White fundamentalists regarded themselves as real Christians and viewed modernism as just another word for apostasy. By looking closely at white and black Baptists and Methodists, whose separate denominational trajectories passed close to one another from time to time and on certain issues, Mathews shows how differently whites and blacks responded to the new Protestant fundamentalist movement. White fundamentalists claimed to be defenders of the Protestant faith, that is, of biblical inerrancy, the divinity and virgin birth of Jesus Christ, righteous living, and the certain, literal return of Jesus to a doomed world. Black Baptists and Methodists did not necessarily disagree; in fact, they often sided with white fundamentalists and secular black leaders about how crucial “righteous living” was to race progress. But African Americans did not embrace the “fundamentalist” label despite their oft-stated preference for “old time religion.” African Americans were less worried about “modernism” than about social justice, which fundamentalists largely ignored. Christ beckoned everyone and promised salvation irrespective of race, and for black Baptists and Methodists, that was what fundamentalism should mean. Without that, African Americans could hardly have been less interested in fundamentalism

Faith · Fundamentalism · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Racism · Social Gospel · Sociology · Theology · White (mutation · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · Religious Studies

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