Gene Zubovich - Before the Religious Right: Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY OF THE MODERN AGE

Series Editors

Angus Burgin

Peter E. Gordon

Joel Isaac

Karuna Mantena

Samuel Moyn

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

Camille Robcis

Sophia Rosenfeld

BEFORE THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States

Gene Zubovich

PENN

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

PHILADELPHIA

Copyright 2022 University of Pennsylvania Press

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Zubovich, Gene, author.

Title: Before the religious right : liberal Protestants, human rights, and the polarization of the United States / Gene Zubovich.

Other titles: Intellectual history of the modern age.

Description: 1st edition. | Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2022] | Series: Intellectual history of the modern age | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021030566 | ISBN 9780812253689 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780812298291 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Protestant churchesUnited StatesHistory20th century. | ProtestantismUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Liberalism (Religion)Protestant churchesHistory20th century. | Human rightsReligious aspectsProtestant churchesHistory20th century. | GlobalizationReligious aspectsProtestant churches. | LiberalismUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Polarization (Social sciences)United StatesHistory20th century. | United StatesPolitics and government20th century.

Classification: LCC BR525 .Z83 2022 | DDC 280/.40973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021030566

For Katherine

This book uses pinyin to romanize Chinese names and places and the Library of Congress guidelines for Russian names and locations. Exceptions were made for commonly translated names of individuals and places, and names appearing in quotations.

In 1948, one week before the United Nations ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Federal Council of Churches asked the American public to confront the domestic implications of the UN document. The council was the largest and most influential Protestant body in the United States, and it felt a calling to proclaim these new international human rights to Americans. It announced that respecting the dignity of man required acknowledging the human right to a standard of living adequate for the welfare and security of the individual and the family. Echoing the principles of the New Deal, the council announced that every person is due an adequate living space, a good education, recreation and leisure, proper health services, and the right to join a labor union. The councils 1948 human rights statement was also a direct and public attack on racial segregation. Denouncing Jim Crow as a violation of the gospel of love and human brotherhood, the council pledged to work for a non-segregated church and a non-segregated society.

For the Federal Council of Churches, the denial of freedom, justice and security to others cut across traditional boundaries between foreign and domestic. At a moment when ecumenical Protestants mobilized for a more Christian postwar international order, one that would make sure the horrors of World War II would never be repeated, they recognized that fighting injustice in the United States would be a stepping-stone to a more peaceful world. Abroad and at home, the flagrant violation of human rights in our generation has impeded the achievement of world order, proclaimed the council.

One of the most important products of ecumenical Protestants new global outlook in the 1940s was their commitment to human rights. Ecumenical Protestants, sometimes called liberal or mainline Protestants, distinguished themselves from their evangelical and fundamentalist rivals by opposing Christian nationalism. Since the 1920s, ecumenical Protestants had engaged the world in new ways. In addition to longstanding missionary work, they began to tour the globe on study trips, built international NGOs, and created new connections with their fellow Protestants in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As they helped build these international networks, ecumenical Protestants began to advocate for human rights. In particular, they promoted human rights as a response to the problem of nationalism, as a way of subordinating all peoples and all nations to Gods will under a global government.

In the 1940s, ecumenical Protestants led the charge in bringing international human rights into the domestic politics of the United States. In doing so, they revitalized American conversations around race, the economy, and US foreign relations, and they became important supporters of mid-century liberalism. In the process, they transformed American politics by promoting ideas, policies, and popular movements that outlived the decline of ecumenicals influence in the 1970s. They also unwittingly helped create the politically polarized nation that exists today. Their global gospel was created to change the world. In due time, it transformed the United States. In some important ways, we are living in the world ecumenical Protestants helped create.

It is hard to define any religious group with precision, and that is especially true for Protestants, who today are divided into more than 30,000 denominations. Ecumenical Protestants distinguished themselves by promoting religious pluralism, anti-racism, the rights of labor, governmental aid to the poor, womens rights, and international organizations in the face of opposition from their religious rivals.

Ecumenical Protestants were also institution builders and cooperators. What made this group different from secular liberals who shared some of their political goals, and from other Christian communities, was their devotion to ecumenism. A babel of theologies competed for Protestant attention at mid-century, including realism, modernism, pacifism, personalism, the social gospel, anti-racism, and neoorthodoxy. But ecumenism, the desire to unite Christians, towered above them all, binding together these disparate views and allowing this diverse group to withstand deep disagreements about other religious questions. They were inspired by oikoumene, Greek for the whole globe, and took the biblical injunction to spread the gospel throughout the whole globe (Matt. 24:14) so that they may all be one (John 17:21) to mean that their religion demanded unity. They built organizations with the purpose of overcoming denominational and national divisions. These institutions were one of the main sources of their power in American life and in international affairs. Ecumenical Protestantism consisted of a constellation of groups that orbited around the Federal Council of Churches in the United States, and the World Council of Churches internationally.