Church, Sex, and “Judeo-Christian” Family Life Education

Chapter 3 argues that liberal Protestants and their engagements with social science transformed sex education into family life education beginning in the mid-1920s. Three liberal religious influences interconnected to bring about this transformation: (1) the leadership of Anna Garlin Spencer; (2) the alliance Spencer forged between ASHA and the Federal Council of Churches; and (3) the careful balance struck by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish family life educators for encouraging the interfaith ideal of “Judeo-Christian” family values while rejecting marriage across religious lines. The shift to family life education activated churches and some synagogues in sex education work, effectively making the FCC a practical arm of the sex education movement. Shared interest in social scientific concerns about family life and methods of counseling grounded the partnership, with both ASHA and the FCC convinced that strengthening marital sexuality would improve society.

Presbyterian Ecumenism

Most Presbyterians possess an ecumenical spirit. They recognize other denominations as parts of the Body of Christ just as surely as their own. They cooperate enthusiastically in service, worship, and witness with Christians in many different denominations. Their reliance on biblical authority and agreement with Christians in other communions on many theological issues have led American Presbyterians to be involved in practically every major ecumenical endeavor. Many Presbyterians have been leaders in these enterprises as well. The Old Light and New Light Presbyterian reconciliation, major revivals in America and Europe, the mergers of denominations and comity arrangements for mission have provided energy and vision for ecumenism. The planting of newer Reformed churches—in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and predominantly Catholic countries in Europe—embodied this ecumenism. Mainstream Presbyterians played an important role in numerous ecumenical organizations including the Evangelical Alliance, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Federal Council of Churches, the Faith and Order and the Life and Work movements, and the World Council of Churches. Those who left the larger Presbyterian denominations to create new Reformed bodies have likewise engaged in ecumenism. In recent years, however, the extensive formal ecumenical ties have been eclipsed by the extensive ecumenism of local Presbyterian congregations and their individual officers and members.

The Organization of Christian Aid

Chapter Two surveys the actions of concerned Christians outside of the camps. Once Japanese Americans were confined, a proliferation of Christian organizations formed to aid incarcerees. Their greatest efforts went toward supporting worship in the camps and resettling Japanese Americans outside of the camps during the war. The latter required the transformation of public opinion in addition to finding employment and housing for former incarcerees. Publications and speakers encouraged Americans to welcome Japanese Americans as they left the camps. Seeking to decrease racism nationally, activists faced resistance from fearful and racist congregants and pastors. The Federal Council of Churches, the Home Mission Council of North America, the American Friends Service Committee, regional church groups, Christian missionaries, and churches around the country contributed organizational support, pastoral guidance, and material aid.

The Realist–Pacifist Summit Meeting of March 1942 and the Political Reorientation of Ecumenical Protestantism in the United States

“I hope that the matter of the agreement not to discuss the war can be satisfactorily clarified,” Walter M. Horton wrote to the office of the Federal Council of Churches in November of 1941, referring to a meeting of several hundred liberal Protestant leaders the FCC was planning for the following March. “I found some questioning about it” at a recent meeting of peace advocates, some of whom, Horton continued, expressed fear that if they went to the conference they would be obliged “to swear an oath not to say a word about the dominant reality on the horizon.” The distinguished Oberlin theologian worried that the question of “a just and durable peace” that was to be addressed at the “Delaware Conference”—so named on account of its being held on the Delaware, Ohio, campus of Ohio Wesleyan University—might not be effectively engaged because opponents of American entry into World War II were being asked to shut up in the presence of the self-styled “political realists” who were chiefly behind the conclave.

Lending a Hand to Labor: James Myers and the Federal Council of Churches, 1926–1947

On 31 September 1929, James Myers, the industrial secretary of the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), arrived in Marion, North Carolina, to investigate the causes for the continuing industrial unrest that had swept across the southern textile industry since the spring. Shortly after Myers's arrival, as the textile workers attempted to picket the plant, sheriff's deputies fired into the crowd, killing six strikers and wounding twenty-five others. Myers's eulogy for the slain workers admonished the mill owners for the harsh working conditions and low wages, but mostly for their opposition to their workers' right to organize. He also scolded clergymen who argued that industrial conflict was “not the Church's business.” Over the ensuing months, Myers set an example of Christian involvement in labor unrest. He investigated the strike's impact on the community, he met with the governor, and he offered to help mediate the conflict. Dismayed by the suffering that he had uncovered, Myers also organized a relief campaign among church people on behalf of the families of the striking workers. Reflecting on Myers's efforts, the Christian Century declared that Myers stood “almost alone as representative of any active concern in the churches” in the midst of “appalling industrial warfare.” Otherwise, “the forces of organized religion would have to confess to an amazing indifference when confronted by the most acute industrial conflict of the year.”