The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the Religious Right, (Part 1)
By Jim Peron
America's Founding Fathers, men like Adams, Jefferson, Paine and Franklin, were not particularly fond of the Christian religion. They painstakingly worked for the separation of church and state. But within one century their scepticism was forgotten. America became increasingly religious while simultaneously moving toward socialism. Many believe the two movements are antithetical but in fact they are one in the same. As American abandoned reason for faith it also surrendered freedom for socialism.
The morality crusades of the Religious Right grew as the desire for state socialism grew. As America deserted its libertarian philosophy the religious fervour of the American people increased. The first federal regulations banning erotic material only came about during the Lincoln administration. Drugs, like cocaine and heroin, were legal until the beginning of this century. Laws regulating sexual conduct had fallen into disrepute and were rarely enforced following the Revolution. The moral climate in America was just as laissez - faire as the economic and political climates. John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, in Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America noted:
"... with the post-Revolutionary disestablishment of the churches, state regulation of morality declined noticeably. Legislatures and courts had once responded to the clergy's jeremiads about moral laxity by passing and enforcing laws that punished sexual relations outside of marriage..."
"... According to Robert Wells, "governments in the American colonies gradually lost interest in prosecuting sexual sinners so long as the children of sin were financially cared for." Similarly, the state less frequently prosecuted fornication... In Virginia, for example, the number of morals cases heard in the courts peaked in the 1720s and then declined sharply.... Thus, with the formation of state and local governments during and after the Revolution, and the gradual separation of church from civil authority - a process that extended into the 1830s - the prosecution of sexual offences lost the central place it had held in early colonial society."
During the years following the American Revolution the statesmen of the day embraced economic, moral, and religious laissez faire. Religion no longer was the central focus of the American government. The country was free in all senses of the word. Calvinist Gary North admits this as well: "There is no doubt that after the Revolution, the focus of the civil government became one of protecting individual liberty rather than protecting Christian society (e.g., sexual morality), even in once-Puritan Massachusetts." As Fernández-Armesto and Wilson have pointed out less than 7 per cent of the American people belonged to a church in 1800, just after the American revolution.
During the war dictatorship of Lincoln major inroads for collectivism were made both economically and socially. And as these inroads were being made church membership had risen to 15.5 per cent. Again, during the Progressive Era major battles were fought as the country adopted a religiously oriented, morally rigid position. By 1910 church membership had risen to 43.5 per cent. At the same time that Prohibition was gaining ground, age of consent laws were passed (this was previously under common law), abortion was made illegal, prostitution was attacked, censorship was embraced and economic collectivism was applauded. State regulation of the market place was wedded to the same philosophy that called for government intervention into the social sphere. The argument, which was widely accepted by now, was that if government can centrally plan man's social life then it certainly can centrally plan his economic life.
D'Emilio and Freedman, though apparently not libertarians, back up this analysis. The regulation of human sexuality in America declined sharply after the Revolution and only started making a comeback during the so-called Progressive Era. It would surprise many to learn that only four state legislatures even bothered passing anti obscenity laws prior to the Civil War. They also noted that "between 1860 and 1890, forty states and territories enacted anti-abortion statutes ...and helped transfer legal authority for abortion from women to doctors."
The anti porn crusade only began in earnest in 1872 with the creation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice by Anthony Comstock. A year later Congress had passed a law forbidding the mailing of obscene literature. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s these "Comstock" laws were strengthened. The temperance movement, including the Women's Christian Temperance Union, joined the anti porn crusade as well. "By the end of the century, at least seven states had passed 'Little Comstock Act' to regulate news stand sales of lascivious literature, and almost ever state eventually joined their ranks."
The so-called Progressive Era was the downfall of both economic and social freedom. As D'Emilio and Freedman noted: "Progressive reform called upon the state to intervene as never before in the country's economic and social life ...the Progressive era witnessed the emergence of a full-blown sexual politics. And, unlike, the sexual reform efforts of the previous century, which had relied largely on moral persuasion and individual self-control, early-twentieth-century crusaders unabashedly sought state regulation to achieve their goals."
During the late 1800s and early 1900s two distinct philosophies, both of a collectivist bent, began dominating American culture. The first was the Progressive movement which advocated Marxist-like doctrines about the nature of rights and government. They argued that individuals could be exploited by virtue of their class membership and that a paternalistic state was there to protect people even, if necessary, against their will. The consent of the individual was not primary but alleged ramifications to "society" was all-important. They envisioned a world of social engineering where every aspect of human existence could and should be centrally planned by the experts - themselves. At the same time the separation between religion and state was in decline. With a merger of these two strands of thought the Progressive Era was born. Economic and social freedom was looked down upon. Individualism was a thing of the past. It is no wonder that in just a few short years America went from a free, open society to a collectivist state.
While conservatives blame the slide toward socialism on F.D.R. the fact is that most of his collectivist policies had been promoted decades earlier by the Progressives who combined a zealous Christianity with the desire for governmental interventionism. Richard Hofstadter, in his investigation of the Progressive movement, The Age of Reform, says:
"As practical participants and as ideologists and exhorters the clergy made themselves prominent, and a great deal of the influence of Progressivism as well as some of its facile optimism and naiveté may be charged to their place in its councils. Indeed, Progressivism can be considered from this standpoint as a phase in the history of the Protestant conscience, a latter-day Protestant revival ...No other major movement in American political history (unless one classifies abolitionism and prohibitionism as a major movement) had ever received so much clerical sanction. Jeffersonianism had taken the field against powerful clerical opposition; Jacksonianism had won its triumphs without benefit of clergy; but the new-model army of Progressivism had its full complement of chaplains.
Hofstadter argued: "The Progressive mind, I have said, was pre-eminently a Protestant mind; and even though much of its strength was in the cities, it inherited the moral traditions of rural evangelical Protestantism." One of the main Progressive reformers, Frederic C. Howe, wrote an autobiography called "The Confessions of a Reformer" which backs up what Hofstadter has argued. Howe confessed that evangelical ideas on good and evil was the "most characteristic influence of my generation. It explains the nature of our reforms, the regulatory legislation in morals and economics, our belief in men rather than in institutions and our messages to other peoples. Missionaries and battleships, anti-saloon leagues and Ku Klux Klans, Wilson and Santo Domingo are all part of that evangelistic psychology...." Rev. Richard Neuhaus notes that the author of a book on American revivalism, William McLoughlin, "is among those who contend that 1890-1920 represents 'The Third Great Awakening'." Neuhaus said that: "Social Gospel proponents such as Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden were for the most part content to demonstrate the moral power of the churches to 'Christianise' the social order, specifically to challenge 'laissez faire capitalism' with a 'social' or 'fraternal' reordering of the economic system."
One of the most popular books of the early Progressive era was Ignatius Donnelly's novel Caesar's Column, which was a sort of Progressive Atlas Shrugged. Donnelly sets his story in 1988 where a vicious dictatorship controls America. He argues, of course, that because the Progressives were ignored in the 1890s that this evil system was imposed because of the "greed" of the social elite. The system finally collapses and decays even further into a modern version of the French Revolution. New York City is finally destroyed, but as Hofstadter describes, "a saving remnant of decent folk escapes in a dirigible to the African mountains, where under the guidance of an elite of intellectuals they form a Christian socialist state in which the Populist program for land, transportation, and finance becomes a reality and interest is illegal."
Crusading Progressive journalist William Allen White wrote a book in 1910 called The Old Order Changeth which Hofstadter says is "a statement of what was probably the dominant popular philosophy of politics." In the book White argues that: "Altruism is gaining strength for some future struggle with the atomic force of egoism in society." He said: "Democracy is at base, altruism expressed in terms of self-government." According to White individuals no longer would pursue their own self-interest but live for the sake of the community good.
As influential as these books were the one book that most changed American politics was Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards. Bellamy wrote of a futuristic America where socialism reigns. In its first year of publication, 1888, the book sold 100,000 copies and eventually topped a million copies in print and was translated into 20 languages. As a work of American fiction it was only surpassed in the Nineteenth Century by Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hur. John Dewey, the great advocate of government schooling, called Bellamy his "Great American Prophet" and said: "What Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the anti-slavery movement Bellamy's book may well be to the shaping of popular opinion for a new social order..." In fact Dewey took many of his socialist ideals for education and indoctrination from Bellamy. Historian John Baer said that Dewey "was ready to advocate Edward Bellamy's type of education and to reform American society through 'progressive education.'"
In the novel Julian West falls asleep in 1887 only to awaken in the year 2000. He finds an America where the means of production are owned by the state and everyone earns equal incomes. Jobs are assigned by the government to conscripts who must work for the state from the age of 21 until retirement at 45.
Edward, along with his cousin Francis Bellamy, were the two major spokesmen for what they called nationalism, by which they meant the nationalising of all industry under state control. The Bellamy cousins helped form an organisation to promote these ideas in 1889 called the Society for Christian Socialists. According to historian John Baer:
'The principles [of the society] stated that economic rights and powers were gifts of God, not for the receiver's use only, but for the benefit of all. All social, political and industrial relations should be based on the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, in the spirit of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Capitalism was not based on Christian love but on selfish individualism."
The Bellamy cousins came from a long lineage of Baptist clergymen. There Grandfather had been a top aide to "The Great Awakening" evangelist Jonathan Edwards. Francis Bellamy was a graduate of a seminary and was himself an ordained Baptist minister. He openly preached socialism from the pulpit which lead to some conflicts with his congregation. However, one member of the congregation was enthusiastic about the Christian socialist principles of Bellamy; that was Daniel Ford the editor of the Christian publication The Youth's Companion. Ford also was founder of the famed Ford Hall Forum
Ford offered Francis Bellamy a position with his magazine. Together they continued to work with various advocates of socialism and state control. It was decided that one thing that was needed was a program to teach American youth State loyalty. The individualist tradition in America didn't lend itself easily to the "patriotism" needed for the socialist state of Looking Backward. The idea was floated in "Progressive" circles that the youth should be indoctrinated with concepts of loyalty to the State. Ford and Bellamy contacted the National Education Association, which was then headed by William Torrey Harris. Harris, according to Baer:
"... believed in a state controlled public education system. As the leading Hegelian philosopher in the United States he believed that the State had a central role in society. He believed youth should be trained in loyalty to the State and the public school was the institution to plant fervent loyalty and patriotism. Like many other American educators of his time, he admired and copied the Prussian educational system."
In 1892, Harris got the NEA to support a National Public School Celebration which would promote loyalty to both the State and to public schools. It was decided that they would promote an agenda written by The Youth's Companion. The NEA asked Bellamy to be the chairman of the event. At the main event Bellamy gave a speech which showed the importance of public education in the task of political indoctrination. He told the audience, "the training of citizens in the common knowledge and the common duties of citizenship belongs irrevocably to the State." Bellamy, like his cousin, wanted to use government schools to help promote a socialist agenda. He felt that one way of encouraging this agenda would be the teaching of State loyalty. To this end he wrote a pledge which students across the country were asked to take. With a few minor changes this pledge is now called the Pledge of Allegiance.
Ford's The Youth's Companion first published Bellamy's pledge on September 8, 1892 in its original format: I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Baer says that Francis openly admitted that his Pledge was "expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897)." Bellamy originally toyed with the idea of making the Pledge more openly socialistic but decided that if he did so it would never be accepted. Instead, by using it in the schools, he hoped to promote government control of education and State loyalty: two concepts he felt would help push America in the direction his cousin wanted.
One of the major Christian social movements of the era was the famed Women's Christian Temperance Union lead for almost two decades by Francis Willard an active evangelical Methodist. Willard, while originally an educator, in 1877 accepted a position working for the fundamentalist revivalist Dwight L. Moody, founder of Chicago's Moody Church and the Moody Bible Institute. Willard's employment with Moody allowed her the freedom necessary to continue her work with the WCTU. A rabid prohibitionist, Willard shaped the WCTU's agenda into a replica of her own. Her motto was "Do Everything." What this meant was that in a new moral order the reformers, like the WCTU, would leave nothing to chance. The new social order would shape every aspect of man's life from the spiritual to the physical. Professor Dana Robert of the Boston University School of Theology summarised Willard's philosophy. She said Willard was a "woman suffragist, Methodist activist, Christian socialist, political prohibitionist, and president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union from 1879 to 1898." Robert says that Willard "was on the cutting edge of social reform, and she took the WCTU with her. She was a Fabian socialist...." Contrary to modern perception the WCTU was not "a single-issue movement, temperance was the glue that held social reform together."
Willard was a close ally of the Bellamy cousins. And when they, along with Rev. W.D.P. Bliss formed the Society for Christian Socialists she was right there working beside them. The Society created a socialist publication "The Dawn", which was edited by Bliss while Edward Bellamy and Francis Willard served as associate editors.
Willard pledged her crusading women to the emancipation of "three sets of slaves." These were "white slaves" who she imagined to be women entrapped by organised prostitution rings; "whiskey slaves" or those who drank alcohol; and finally "wage slaves" or workers oppressed by the evils of capitalism. Even the whiskey slave was ultimately a victim of the evil machinations of capitalist exploiters. Willard said:
"I charge upon the drink traffic that it keeps the people down, and capitalists and politicians know it. Nothing else could hold wage - workers where they are today except the blight that strong drink puts on all their faculties and powers."
Oddly while Willard was quick to use the slavery imagery to make her points against capitalism and immorality she didn't seem to have much compassion for ex-slaves themselves. In fact, like many of her fellow Progressives she seemed downright racist. She told one reporter that "The grog shop is the Negro's centre of power. Better whiskey and more of it the rallying cry of great dark faced mobs." She argued that allowing the vote to Blacks was a wrong inflicted on the South and that the north should be "pushing the vote onto the Plantation Negro". The great emancipated slave, Frederick Douglas, was subjected to a letter from Willard saying: "I pity the Southerners... The coloured race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt, the safety of women, of childhood, of the home is menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that men dare not go beyond the sight of their own roof-free."
Of course Willards racism was not out of place. The Progressive movement in America, and Marxist elements in Europe often pandered to open racism. Marx and many of his followers were rabidly anti-Jewish. In the United States the Left frequently adopted anti-Black viewpoints as well. And of course both in the US and Europe many a prominent Leftist embraced the eugenics movement.
James Morone, in his book "Hellfire Nation", noted that Willard quickly joined the moralistic crusades - in fact she instigated many of them. Morone writes: "Even Frances Willard - who kept a labour leader's photography on her desk, who pushed her woman's army toward Christian socialism - could not resist the moralising tide. In the end, she too justified the lynch-mobs in the South and jeered the immigrants in the North."
Willard said that: "In every Christian there exists a socialist; and in every socialist a Christian...." She claimed that socialism "is best defined as 'Christianity applied.'" The WCTU, which many see as a forerunner of the so-called Religious Right, did more than promote prohibition. They demanded government control of virtually all aspects of human existence. Willard bragged that she even called for a national "department of amusements" to control how individuals entertained themselves. From books to wages the State would be in control. Sin and capitalism would be wiped out to be replaced by a Christian socialist moral order in line with Edward Bellamy's vision.
The Progressive movement was fundamentally a Christian movement and it is surely no accident that America changed course philosophically after Christianity gained influence. Once the secular views of the Founders were abandoned the prevailing theology of the day influenced American politics. The demise of individualism and the rise of collectivism followed the rise of religion in American politics.
What is today termed the "Religious Right" is a relatively new phenomenon in American politics. Of course the United States has always had fundamentalist Christians but their activity in Right - wing politics is new, even if their participation in politics is not. The first major religiously oriented widespread political movement was the Progressive-Populist campaign of the late 1800s. There were some strong religious elements in the feminist crusades and in the abolitionist movement as well but neither of these had the same culture wide influence.
The Populists found their White Knight in the person of William Jennings Bryan. He was a hard-core fundamentalist, the voice of populist socialism and a frequent presidential candidate for the Democratic Party and the People's Party. Fundamentalists didn't have problems with this combination. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, under the leadership of Francis Willard, promoted prohibition and socialism as well. Bryan, the great prosecutor of evolution openly advocated big brother government which would regulate human existence from the cradle to the grave. Imbued with the reformationist desire to change the world these Christians bravely marched into American politics in lock-step with Marxists and socialists of all types. As Bryan himself explained it the basic principle of his Fundamentalist movement was: "The right of the community is superior to the right of any individual." Collectivism was the hallmark of the Populists. They were in love with state control of the economy and of man's social life.
For decades what is now called the Religious Right worked arm-in-arm with the Left. The Left even used religious imagery and mythology to bolster their call for expanded state power. But the alliance between fundamentalism and socialism was an uncomfortable one. The secular socialists used religious beliefs to promote socialism but they felt uncomfortable with the fundamentalist mind-set. They may have hated the liquor industry, after all it was run by capitalists, but they weren't as anxious to ban liquor. Many leading Prohibitionists were socialists but not all socialists were Prohibitionists. And the Bryanites weren't impressed by the theology of their political allies.
The conflict between fundamentalist Christianity and the religious Left was not over the political direction they were taking. As E.J. Dionne, Jr., said in his excellent book "Why Americans Hate Politics":
The Christian traditionalists were alarmed by these developments, but not because of their political direction. Indeed, John Dewey, who could not be accused of harbouring any sympathy for fundamentalist ideas, credited fundamentalists such as William Jennings Bryan with being 'the backbone of philanthropic social interest, of social reform through political action, of pacifism, of popular education." Not political but spiritual concerns animated the fundamentalist revolt against the Social gospel. "What troubled conservatives about the Social Gospel in particular was not the new movement's endorsement of social concern, but the Social Gospel's emphasis on social concern to the seeming exclusion of the spiritual dimensions of faith," Hunter has written. Conservatives, he wrote, 'feared the growing popularity of the New Christianity as a threat to the apostolic faith.'
Fundamentalists, with their desire to regulate private morality, were quite successful. Since the public mood was decisively to the Left, the idea of regulating morality the way one regulated the economy found favour with large numbers of voters. Prof. James Morone, in his history "Hellfire Nation" writes that:
"Moral panics and dreams of virtue enlarge the American state. Government seize new forms of authority (controlling interstate commerce, confiscating real estate), enter private lives (banning abortions and contraceptives), organise new agencies (like the FBI), and kindle popular expectations ('For God's Sake, Do Something!'). The purity crusaders rolled over formidable barriers - states' rights, southern discomfort, constitutional scruples, private property, business interests, ad fears of government power. The traditional liberal view protected private lives from political meddling. But back at the end of the nineteenth century, the peoples character seemed like the key to national destiny. Today, a new generation of Victorians still sees it that way."
The morality crusades of religious Progressives were used as excuses to increase state power. And Prohibition was the most ambitious moral crusade in American history until the War on Drugs - a war that is directly related to Prohibition. Morone notest that "Prohibiting liquor looked like one more Progressive social amelioration, blending easily into the movement's disdain for inferior people and corrupt politics."
Fundamentalism wanted increased state control because they felt without it people would be ungodly. The Progressives wanted state control because without it they felt people would be unfair. Both saw individuals as inherently evil either through a sinful nature or through greed. Both saw the solution in vastly expanded governmental powers. They worked together because they fed off of each other's ideology. Theirs was a dysfunctional relationship to say the least but it was a marriage of convenience.
The Prohibitionist Progressives won their battle (but lost the war) partly because of political "reforms" pushed through by the Left. In the age of much smaller government the United States had no income tax at all. Morone notes that that "the largest source of internal revenue had been from liquor taxes. Alcohol money brought in one - third of all government receipts and two - thirds of the cash collected at home (that is, excluding customs duties). The national government was hooked on that liquor money." That government was funded mainly by taxes on alcohol was a significant roadblock for the Prohibitionists. But it was a roadblock the Progressive Left was happy to remove for them.
In 1913 the federal income tax was proposed by Progressives. Of course all the typical canards of the Left were used to placate the people. The Left promised that the tax would never be very high and that it would only apply to the richest few in America. That line didn't last long but it did last long enough to get the measure passed and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. But once in place, as Morone says, "liquor money was finally expendable." The Progressive's success on taxing income directly resulted in the Prohibitionists success in banning alcohol. And that, as Morone writes:
"... prepared the cultural ground for the active government of the New Deal. In fact, wet conservatives roasted Prohibition as the greatest government grab of private property in American history (excepting emancipation)... we forget how Prohibition poured the institutional foundation for our contemporary war on drugs."
With Billy Sunday and others on a nation-wide anti-liqour crusade Prohibition was starting to find widespread support particularly among the lower classes - one segment of society often drawn to both fundamentalism and socialism simultaneously. In a relatively short time the Prohibitionists were successful and America was plunged into the nightmare of banning alcohol. The Bryanites turned their attention to stamping out another social evil: evolution. And Bryan was willing to lead the charge as well. With the prosecution of John Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee the anti - evolutionists were hoping for a knockout victory for the forces of morality. Bryan testified for the prosecution. On the defence team was Bryan's long-time political ally Clarence Darrow. Both men were socialists. But where Bryan was God's man of the moment Darrow had no such pretensions: he was a secularist and a sceptic.
In that courtroom the split between the Bryanites and the Left was finalised. Darrow devastated the testimony of Bryan. Bryan argued for a literal interpretation of the Bible since God's Word was infallible. Darrow put Bryan on the stand and cross-examed him. The result was an embarrassment for Bryan who couldn't answer some simple questions. Bryan attempted to be glib and humorous but Darrow kept hammering home his points. Fundamentalism in America was publicly made a laughing stock. The libertarian journalist H.L. Mencken was at the zenith of his career as a writer and Bryan was a favourite target.
The film version of the Scopes trial, Inherit the Wind, basically portrays the trial through the conflicts between Bryan, Darrow and Mencken. The Mencken-character, portrayed inadequately by Gene Kelley, is rather ineffective in the film. But in real life Mencken's reports on the trial were spread across the country. Darrow may have devastated Bryan and fundamentalism in the witness box but it was Mencken's satiric reporting that ended Bryan's reputation. Bryan ended his life believing that he had won since Scopes had been convicted and fined $100 - which was paid by Mencken's newspaper. But later the conviction was overturned on a technicality though the anti-evolution statute remained on the books in Tennessee until 1967.
Mencken described the Bryanites as Homo Neandertalensis. He told his readers:
"The so-called religious organisations which now lead the war against the teaching of evolution are nothing more, at bottom, than conspiracies of the inferior man against his betters. They mirror very accurately his congenital hatred of knowledge, his bitter enmity to the man who knows more than he does, and so gets more out of life. Certainly it cannot have gone unnoticed that their membership is recruited, in the overwhelming main, from the lower orders - that no man of any education or other human dignity belongs to them. What they propose to do, at bottom and in brief, is to make the superior man infamous - by mere abuse if sufficient, and if it is not, then by law."
Mencken explained to his readers that the theories of the universe which science teaches are difficult to understand but "the cosmogony of Genesis is so simple that even a yokel can grasp it. It sets forth in a few phrases. It offers, to an ignorant man, the irresistible reasonableness of the nonsensical. So he accepts it with loud hosannas, and has one more excuse for hating his betters." Mencken that it "was plain to everyone, when Bryan came to Dayton, that his great days were behind him - that he was definitely an old man, and headed at last for silence." He said that when he and Bryan first talked in Dayton that they were friendly but that as the battle waged "his face became hard. By the end of the first week he was simply a walking malignancy." Mencken described Bryan's legal arguments and said that when he finished them: "He sat down one of the most tragic asses in American history." Over and over the barbs of Mencken were read by hundreds of thousands of Americans.
The tide was clearly turning against the Bryans of the world. The secular socialists cheered Darrow and pretended to have forgotten that Bryan was one of their own. He was a man who championed their causes and promoted their theories. But for many American's he was now a senile buffoon, an object of earned ridicule.
To make matters worse for the morality crusaders had succeeded in passing Prohibition. Evangelist Billy Sunday had promised the public that once instituted Prohibition would lead to paradise on earth. Families would be reunited and prosperous as men abandoned alcohol and returned to the hearth and home filled with love and dignity. Well, of course, it didn't happen that way.
Alcohol simply became an illegal drug and all the economic incentives associated with that fact came into play. Smuggling suddenly became a major business in the United States. The Kennedys became major financial players through the profits they earned off illegal alcohol. Organised crime was "organised" around the illegal liquor trade. The streets of the major cities were scenes for shoot-outs between rival crime gangs. Drive-by shootings were commonplace. And this price finally paid did not result in the promised benefits. Prohibition, like the War on Drugs, was a fraud. It took a bad situation and made it worse.
The corner bar was closed but replaced by the speakeasy. Not only didn't men abandon going out for a drink but for the first time in American history large numbers of women joined them in the clandestine gin joints that popped up behind false facades or underneath phoney floors.
Bryan and Company were there when the Democrats embraced Prohibition. So was Mencken. In his crusade for prohibition Bryan, said Mencken "was simply a magnificent job-seeker" and a "vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted. He was ignorant, bigoted, self-seeking, blatant and dishonest. His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time; he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses..." He was "a poor clod" who was "deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things. He was a peasant come home to the dung-pile. Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not." If Mencken enjoyed taking on the anti-evolutionist in Bryan he enjoyed ridiculing the Prohibitionist in him even more.
Bryan's reputation in American politics had sunk to the very bottom. The Noble Experiment of fundamentalist Christianity - Prohibitionism - was a dismal failure. The anti-evolution crusade was dead. The anti-liquor crusade was a walking corpse waiting for someone to admit it and to abolish it. Fundamentalist Christians, who were in their hey-day during the Populist movement, were not welcomed anywhere now. Their allies on the Left had become openly secular though they did not surrender their desire to tamper with every aspect of human existence. The Left abandoned Christianity but not the desire to use the power of the state as a tool of reforming sinners.
Continue to The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of the Religious Right, Part Two
Jim Peron is the Executive Director of the Institute for Liberal Values, the editor of the book The Liberal Tide, and the author of the forthcoming book 'The Road Not Taken: Resolving the Crisis on the Roads.'
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