Author Archives: Clarke Morledge

About Clarke Morledge

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Clarke Morledge -- Computer Network Engineer, College of William and Mary... I hiked the Mount of the Holy Cross, one of the famous Colorado Fourteeners, with some friends in July, 2012. My buddy, Mike Scott, snapped this photo of me on the summit.
May 5, 2020

Billy Sunday: Great American Evangelist of the Early 20th Century

By Clarke Morledge

Billy Sunday. 1862-1935.

I visited Winona Lake, Indiana about 18 years ago, to visit the home of Billy Sunday. The Billy Sunday Home Museum is worth making an afternoon trip, as it gives you a glimpse of that “Old Time Religion,” that Billy Sunday used to preach about, as the most famous American evangelist, in the first quarter of the 20th century. Managed by the Winona History Center, of Grace College, the home museum contains a remarkable collection of artifacts, recording what life was like, for evangelical Christians living one hundred years ago. There is even a Virtual Tour that you can take.

Billy Sunday had a very poor childhood, but he rose to national prominence, as a major league baseball player, for the Chicago White Stockings. But his career as a baseball player took a turn when he visited the Pacific Garden Mission, a legendary evangelistic ministry, in the heart of Chicago. Billy Sunday committed his life to Christ, at the mission. The Pacific Garden Mission is still active today, giving help to Chicago’s homeless community, while preaching an uncompromising message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Billy Sunday went onto become a nationwide, traveling evangelist. Prior to World War One, Billy Sunday was well regarded as a champion of the Christian faith, preaching a homespun message. But in the post-war era, the national mood began to change.

It was an new era marked by the growth of “modernism,” a theological movement, stemming from German “Higher Criticism,” that began to move through America’s mainline Protestant churches. Still energetic, Billy Sunday spoke out against those liberal theological impulses, that sought to change the character of traditional beliefs and practices of America’s Christian heartland. He even became a vocal supporter of prohibition, banning the use of all alcohol. But Billy Sunday never adopted the newer methods of communicating his message, like radio or moving pictures.

He was also aging. Many of his critics came to think that his conservative theological views were aging as well.

In reacting to modernism, Billy Sunday had became the embodiment of the faith and outlook of those “fundamentalist” Christians who “hit the sawdust trail.” Billy Sunday’s unsophisticated fundamentalism represented both the stalwart and faithful return to “old time religion,” for some, and simultaneously, the object of scorn and ridicule for others.

Here is a rare film recording of Billy Sunday preaching in Boston, in 1926.

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May 2, 2020

Aimee Semple McPherson (on Prohibition)

By Clarke Morledge

Radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). A modern day Deborah? Or a sensational character leading evangelicalism into the tragic morass of contemporary feminism?
(Photo credit: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

“Sister Aimee” Semple McPherson was the most famous female evangelist of the early 20th century. In an age when many Christians believed then (just as many still do) that women were not to be preachers, Sister Aimee broke all of the rules, becoming a founder of a leading Pentecostal movement, the International Church of the Four Square Gospel, and one of America’s best known and celebrated radio evangelists. Here is Sister Aimee speaking about prohibition:

She was not simply a leading church figure, she was a public celebrity, with a broad-based appeal. Take a look at this 90-second video news report of Sister Aimee returning to Los Angeles, from a preaching tour.

But according to historian Timothy Gloege, the author of Guaranteed Pure: The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism, Sister Aimee’s use of theatrics and elaborate props and costumes had overshadowed the more “respectable evangelicalism” headquarters on the West Coast, at the nearby Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA). Sister Aimee’s pomp and flair embarrassed the more reserved, yet still determinedly evangelistic disposition of those Christians, who found the vaudevillian drama of Sister Aimee’s style rather off-putting.

Sister Aimiee had become a symbol of what a certain strand of evangelicalism was becoming. She was a bolster to an emerging egalitarianism, affirming the validity of women serving in top positions of Christian leadership, a movement having its roots in the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions, of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But her ministry reputation was deeply tarnished due to a serious scandal. In May, 1926, Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared, while taking a walk near a California beach. After she had gone missing for five weeks, she reappeared in an Arizona hospital. Sister Aimee claimed that she had been kidnapped and taken to Mexico, where she was able to escape from her captors, and made her way by foot to the Arizona border, where she collapsed and became hospitalized.

Her most loyal supporters believed her story, but others were more cynical, believing that she had been having an affair with a married man. The folk song writer, Pete Seeger, takes the more cynical view in his “The Ballad of Aimee McPherson” (WARNING: SOME CONTENT MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR SOME AUDIENCES).

Regardless of the controversy, the story of Aimee Semple McPherson continues to fascinate to this day.

Read these other Veracity posts for more on Sister’s Aimee’s contribution to the egalitarian movement, and lingering questions about her personal reputation.

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April 27, 2020

Blessed, by Kate Bowler: The Quandary of the Prosperity Gospel

By Clarke Morledge

My mother had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer, a deadly case of glioblastoma, or cancer of the brain. My heart sank when her doctor told me, over the phone, that even with surgery, the cancer had a near 100% probability of return, and it would be fatal. In her eighties, my mother had only a few months to live, at best.

My dad and I opted for the surgery, which would give her as much time as possible, to be with family, before her ultimate death. Radiation and chemotherapy would bring her more misery than healing. After living a full, wonderful, and vibrant life, it was best simply to allow her to say goodbyes to those who mattered most to her.

Yet after the surgery, when I would come by and visit her in the evening, in her skilled-nursing room, she would have the television on. Night after night, she would tune into watching a very popular Pentecostal preacher, out of Houston, Texas, or another similar preacher.  The message was subtle, but consistently positive: If my mom had the right thoughts, healing was just around the corner.

It is important to know something about my mom.

She went to church, but she was not someone who was avidly, evangelically minded, let’s just say. So, for her to be mesmerized by a television preacher was completely out of step for her. But these were not normal times.

She was dying of cancer.

If only she had faith, she was told, she would be healed….

…..the prosperity gospel offered her a chance of survival.

 

Reading Kate Bowler’s Blessed: A History of the Prosperity Gospel was not like reading a PhD thesis, even though she originally wrote this as her PhD thesis, while a student a Duke University’s graduate program, in religious history. I read; that is, listened to, Kate Bowler as she beautifully read her book to me, via audiobook, while in the midst of “lock down” mode, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Blessed surveys the historical roots of the prosperity gospel, and how it continues to be a multi-billion dollar, church-based industry, filling up many of the largest megachurches, in the United States, and saturating the television airwaves, cable networks, and Internet podcasts. The influence of the prosperity gospel even extends up into halls of political power, in the United States White House.

I learned a couple of new things about the prosperity gospel. First, I realized that, contrary to common belief, the prosperity gospel is not really about learning how to become rich and wealthy, per se. Instead, the prosperity gospel primarily appeals to people who are just trying to survive. Folks in prosperity gospel churches typically do not mind if their pastor drives an expensive car, lives in a massive mansion, or wears outrageously fancy clothes. The pastor’s wealth is evidence, reassuring the faithful, that the prosperity gospel really works.

Adherents do get bothered when pastors embezzle funds, or practice deceit in gaining riches, because that would be a sign that those pastors really do not believe what they are preaching. For the prosperity gospel promises that it is God who will provide, and such provision is not a result of human contriving. Followers of the prosperity gospel look to their pastor’s genuine success as reassuring themselves that they might be able to get that long, lost promised promotion, or that nice, new house, to replace the cramped, rented place they are in now, or …. in the case of my mother…. an extension on a life, with a newly restored body, then currently riddled with cancer.

It helped me to have more compassion on those who are drawn to the prosperity gospel.

Secondly, the prosperity gospel is not always that easy to detect. There are what can be called “hard-sell” prosperity gospel preachers, who are pretty upfront in propagating “name-it-and-claim-it” rhetoric. One of the more popular 20th century prosperity preachers, Oral Roberts, used to talk about this concept of “seed-faith,” where believers need to think of “giving to God as a seed we sow, and not a debt we owe.”

In prosperity theology, God has established a contract with the believer. Prayer is a legal binding act. We can call upon God to enforce the terms of the contract by “demanding” God to act, because the believer is legally entitled to receive healing and wealth.

Early 20th century prosperity teacher E. W. Kenyon even taught that Jesus transferred the “power of attorney to all those who use his name.” By speaking out in “the name of Jesus,” that legal authority is given over to the person, who desires to see God act, through healing and other material well-being. For example, Kenyon replaced the “ask” in “ask, and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7), with the word “demand.” We can demand God to do things, because God has contracted himself to do them! Kate Bowler demonstrates that Kenyon’s message was an amalgamation of Christian theology, specifically as derived from the late 19th century Keswick spirituality movement, and the “New Thought Movement,” of the same era, a more loosely religious philosophy of “mind cure” and self-help.

But Kate Bowler shows that there are “soft-sell” prosperity gospel proponents, where the message is a lot more subtle. The prosperity gospel largely grew out of Pentecostal and charismatic movements, but not all Pentecostal/ charismatic churches can be called “prosperity gospel” churches, as such. Nevertheless, Kate Bowler identified a number of Pentecostal/charismatic-based ministries, that I believed were not “prosperity gospel” oriented, that upon closer examination, promoted this more toned down approach to prosperity theology

Even the famed Oral Roberts, left his Pentecostal Holiness background, to become a member of the United Methodist church, a more classically “respectable” denomination. In contrast with other, more “hard sell” prosperity gospel promoters, that sometimes eschewed modern medicine, Oral Roberts campaigned to build a large medical hospital, that would rival medical care given in more secular settings. Today, Oral Roberts University has a large percentage of undergraduates who go into graduate-level medical programs, in some of America’s leading medical schools. In other words, the line between prosperity gospel teachings and non-prosperity gospel teachings gets blurred in such “soft-sell” prosperity movements.

This lesson is all the more important to me, as I have often held a certain grudge against a form of cessationism, an evangelical interpretation of Scripture that teaches that the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as a gift of performing miracles, possessed by a particular person, ceased to operate in the era of the 1st century Christian church. Cessationists, generally speaking, believe that while the New Testament was still being written, there was a definite need for miraculous gifts of the Spirit, such as speaking in tongues, to flourish. But once the New Testament was completed, and the last of the original apostles had died off, those miraculous gifts ceased to function. Everything a Christian ever needs now is found in the pages of the Bible. Speaking in tongues today is no longer expected.

Though I am not convinced that such an uncompromising cessationism is really Scripturally founded, I am now more sympathetic towards those who hold to this position, as many such cessationists tend to conflate the distorting influence of the prosperity gospel with nearly all forms of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement.  I would argue that such a categorization is unfair, particularly in light of the fact that a number of Pentecostal and charismatic group explicit reject the prosperity gospel. But the pervasive presence of “soft-sell” prosperity theology so effectively blurs the line, that I can see why so many cessationists hold to the aggressively non-charismatic positions that they do.

The very slippery nature of the prosperity gospel, as it rose within the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, has therefore proven to be a quandary for me. Simply saying that “such-and-such is teaching the prosperity gospel” defies easy categorization.

I am therefore grateful for Kate Bowler’s work, as it helped me to have more empathy for those who are drawn to the prosperity gospel, and to realize that the fine line for drawing where the prosperity gospel really begins and ends, is not always easy to find. Yet what makes Bowler’s work the most poignant is that during the latter stage of her research into the prosperity gospel, she herself was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, at the relatively young age of 35. Though apparently immunotherapy has extended her life thus far, the interests that originally plunged her into her PhD research, suddenly became deeply personal.

What is missing in Blessed is a clear, Scriptural exposition as to how the prosperity gospel falls short of solid, orthodox Bible teaching. For that, I have found a number of helpful blog posts (such as #1 and #2) written by Costi Hinn, a nephew of hard-sell prosperity Bible teacher, Benni Hinn, who left the prosperity gospel a few years ago. Costi Hinn, now a more Reformed-mind Bible pastor in Arizona, blogs occasionally at The Gospel Coalition. But I was not expecting Bowler’s PhD thesis to be a polemic, anyway. Blessed stands alone as an authoritative treatment on how the prosperity gospel came to be, and continues to flourish.

I eventually persuaded my mother to turn off the television. I read the Bible to her during my every other evening visits, while the cancer slowly took her life away. I knew that she desperately wanted to find healing, and she really wanted to believe that what the prosperity gospel teachers were saying were true. I honestly think that such prosperity preachers meant well. Believe me, I really wanted them to be right, too.

But it really frustrated me that the message she was hearing was promising something that could not be ultimately delivered. It really felt like the prosperity preachers were cheating my mother out of what was vastly more important. In fancy theological language, the prosperity gospel was offering an over-realized eschatology, promising something for her in this life, that only properly and fully belonged in the next. The prosperity gospel was a distraction, that while surely helpful in many ways, was ultimately obscuring the message of the True Gospel.

It was more important that my mom discover what it meant to be reconciled with God. I did pray for my mother that she might be healed. But I also prayed that during those final weeks, that she might have a genuine and rich encounter with the God who Created her, the great Redeemer, who bought her life with a price, that she might find lasting peace with Jesus.

My mother died soon thereafter.

I pray that her soul might be resting in that everlasting peace.

For more Veracity posts on Pentecostalism, the Charismatic movement, and the prosperity gospel, you might want to read the following posts. There is also a multipart blog series on “the baptism of the Holy Spirit.” You can start with a book review that introduces the whole series.

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April 25, 2020

A Virginia Story of African-American Pentecostalism

By Clarke Morledge

During the heights of the 1930’s Great Depression, Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux rose as one of the most prominent African-American radio evangelists, in the history of Pentecostalism. What many do not realize is that his story began near Williamsburg, Virginia, my home town.

Michaux was born in Newport News, Virginia, in 1885. During World War I, Michaux was able to use his business acumen successfully, to obtain contracts to supply food to American troops. By 1917, Michaux had moved his family and business to Hopewell, Virginia, but he was unable to find a church, that fit well with him. Michaux had been drawn into the burgeoning Holiness movement, but he felt that more could be done to advance the Gospel, so he then moved more in Pentecostal circles.

Lightfoot Solomon Michaux (1885 – 1968). Pentecostal Radio Evangelist, Church Planter, Business Entrepreneur, and Founder of the Gospel Spreading Farm, near Williamsburg, Virginia.

Michaux returned to Newport News in 1919, following the war, and began a series of tent revivals, that appealed to many local African Americans. But Michaux bristled against newer Segregation laws in Virginia, and was sent to prison. The racial conflict spurred Michaux onwards, to expand his preaching ministry for the Gospel and against racism, and establish churches. After leaving prison, he moved his ministry operations up to Washington, D.C.

In 1929, Michaux persuaded a local radio station to broadcast his evangelistic services, called the “Happiness Hour.” When the radio station was bought by the CBS Radio Network in 1932, Michaux was catapulted into the national spotlight, with perhaps as many as 25 million radio listeners. He even ventured into international radio ministry with the BBC, in the mid-1930s, thus establishing him as a pioneer, in global radio outreach ministry.

According to the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily, in 1936, Michaux purchased a 500 acre tract of land, located along the James River, just a few miles from Jamestown, Virginia, thus creating the “National Memorial to the Progress of the Colored Race in America.” Locals in Williamsburg know it is the “Gospel Spreading Farm.” When the Colonial Parkway was expanded to connect Williamsburg and Jamestown in the 1950s, the federal government secured a right-of-way, along the river, from the Gospel Spreading Farm, to complete the road project.

Michaux’s vision was to create a type of cooperative farming community, which would serve as a haven for African-Americans, offering educational and evangelistic programs. Michaux believed that a coming economic crisis, an order of magnitude worse than the Great Depression, would severely cripple the American economy. He believed that the farm would become a refuge for thousands of African Americans, to survive such an apocalypse.

Neither the apocalypse, nor the full vision of a highly-functioning, cooperative community, ever materialized. The national influence of Michaux was further eclipsed by a new rising star, in the African-American community, Martin Luther King, Jr.

According to the New York Times, Michaux was highly suspicious of Martin Luther King. Michaux did not believe that King’s vision, enacted through protest marches and sit-ins, was wholly inline with Christian values. Instead, Michaux believed that the crisis of racism in the American culture, could only be resolved through evangelistic preaching, and not through social protests. Michaux even embraced the idea that Martin Luther King was secretly a Communist, and Michaux at times cooperated with J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, to undermine King’s influence.

Michaux was fearless and bold in his preaching. One story from the mid-20th century segregation era relates that Michaux preached at an “all-white, KKK-infested congregation” in Baltimore, Maryland. But his preaching was so effective that a white klansman was converted and joined a branch of Michaux’s African American Church of God, in Baltimore.

Michaux died in 1968. The Gospel Spreading Farm is still in operation, but a dispute in Michaux’s local church, over the land management, led to a split in the community, that for some remains unresolved. The Gospel Spreading Farm is quietly tucked away at the very end of Treasure Island Road, a spur off of Lake Powell Road. Yet residents of Williamsburg will be most familiar with the legacy of Michaux, when they see Oleta Coach Lines buses traveling up and down the roads, surrounding the Williamsburg area. Oleta is family owned and operated, through some church members, who grew up under the shadow of Michaux’s influence.

Below is a film clip from one of Michaux’s evangelist radio sessions, singing his signature song, “Happy Am I.”

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April 22, 2020

The Miracle of the Holy Fire?

By Clarke Morledge

The Holy Fire emerges from the tomb of Jesus, at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (credit: Greek City Times)

I meant to post something about this last weekend, but this past Sunday was Pascha, the Eastern Orthodox celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus, otherwise typically known as “Easter” among English-speaking Western Christians. Different methods of calculating the day of Easter explains why the Eastern and Western churches are not always in sync, when it comes to celebrating the Resurrection.

But I am glad that I waited to post something until now, in that I ran across a very interesting article, by Rod Dreher, of The American Conservative, addressing a popular Eastern Orthodox tradition, associated with Holy Saturday, the day right before Pascha/Easter. Dreher is the author of the widely discussed book The Benedict Option, a prolific journalist, who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy several years ago.

As readers of Veracity might know, I believe that evangelical Protestants have a lot to learn from the Eastern Orthodox. Sadly, Eastern Orthodoxy remains an enigma to most evangelical Protestants, who tend to confuse Eastern Orthodoxy with Roman Catholicism, which only shows just how myopic some evangelical Protestants can be.

When the (once) popular evangelical apologist Hank Hanegraff was received into the Greek Orthodox church in 2017, you would have thought that he had renounced Christianity altogether, based on the criticism levied by some evangelical Protestants. Some even think that Mormonism is more theologically orthodox than Eastern Orthodoxy, which is a pretty laughable judgment.

To summarize those previous posts: Eastern Orthodoxy (abbreviated hereafter as “EO”) does have a lot going for it. Let me list a few of the reasons:

  • A generous posture towards “disputable matters,” for non-essential Christian doctrine: For evangelical Christians tired of the on-going theological debates among Protestant evangelicals, that never seem to go anywhere, EO is like a breath of fresh air. Among the EO, they do not get hung up on matters such as the minute details of the “End Times”, the age of the earth, or the dispute over God’s sovereignty vs. human responsibility. Even though the Book of Revelation is considered to be canonical Scripture, the EO refrain from being obsessive in parsing out the technical details of the book. When it comes to the first few chapters of Genesis, most EO have no problem with the use of metaphorical language to express great theological truth. The dispute between Calvinists and Arminians among evangelical Protestants is a mute point among the EO. On and on the list goes.
  • A consistent and awe-inspiring liturgy, that unites the faithful: For the EO, worship is theology and theology is worship. There is a strong emphasis on integrating doctrine with practical spirituality, something that is often missing in evangelical circles. A profound sense of reverence pervades the corporate worship experience. This is in contrast to a popular trend in many evangelical circles today, where Sunday worship looks more like a rock concert followed by a TED talk, than it does an attitude of awe of being in the presence of a Holy God.
  • A moderate and stable view towards “women in ministry” : Evangelical Protestants love to fight about the so-called “women in ministry” issue. Evangelical churches tend to divide from one another, with complementarians on the one side, opposing women serving as elders, in a local church, and egalitarians on the other side, promoting women to serve as elders. Mark my word, in a good twenty years, you will see even starker lines between complementarian and egalitarian evangelical churches, where you can tell the difference, just by examining what Bible translation is being used by that church. Such a trend does not bode well for the evangelical movement, as such a trend merely reinforces tribalism….  But among the EO, this issue has been settled for hundreds of years. Yes, only men are permitted to serve as priests, and preside over the administration of the sacraments. But in most of the EO churches I have seen, women are more involved in the leadership of the local community, than they are in many evangelical congregations today…. which is all the more ironic, in that the growing trend towards egalitarianism among evangelicals puts up yet another barrier to reconciliation among the Great Traditions of the church.

Yet like any other Christian tradition, EO is not perfect:

  • Nominalism is rampant. More than a few EO are Orthodox in name-only. While many EO Christians have a profoundly deep, even evangelical faith, a vast number of EO parishioners go to church simply because of family tradition, or because there is a sense of fear coming from the local priest or bishop. But then again, that happens in just about every Christian tradition.
  • EO theology sometimes seems fixed in the 8th century: The EO have not had a major church council meeting since the Seventh Ecumenical Council of 787 A.D. The EO emphasis on their long-abiding tradition often leaves them resistant to making certain changes, that would not necessarily compromise their core theological commitments. But a number of EO theological traditions strike evangelical Protestants today as being quite quirky, like the perpetual virginity of Mary.
  • EO churches tend to be more ethnocentric. This is easily seen in the United States. There is an Orthodox Church of America, that spawned off from Russian Orthodoxy, but still, the majority of EO movements in America are strongly tied to their non-American ethnic roots, like the Ukranian, Russian, and Greek Orthodox churches. This has made it hard for the EO to fully integrate into the broader American culture, inhibiting the EO from establishing an authentically American flavor of EO faith.

Anyway, what I wanted to highlight here is this popular tradition among the EO on Holy Saturday. Tradition has it that a miracle occurs every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, on Holy Saturday: the miracle of the “Holy Fire.” The story goes like this: a blue light emerges from the traditional location of Jesus Christ’s tomb, rising above a stone slab, where it is thought that Jesus’ body was laid on Good Friday evening. From the light, candles are lit and then taken outside of the tomb, so that other pilgrims can have their candles lit.

What was quite unusual in 2020 was that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was officially closed this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so there were only a handful of priests on-site to witness the miracle.

I must admit, I am a bit skeptical of this. But I appreciate the perspective shared by Rod Dreher, that his faith is not built upon such signs and wonders. Below is the video posted by Rod Dreher, showing the moment when the Holy Fire is used to light the candles, that are taken out of the tomb. What do Veracity readers think of this?

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