CHAPTER VIII
MOODY BIBLE INSTITUTE
One of Moody’s projects during the 1880's was the founding of the Chicago Bible Institute, which became known as the Moody Bible Institute after his death. More than any of the other enterprises to which Moody gave his time and talent in the eighties, the development of the Moody Bible Institute provides a means of seeing how the evangelist implemented his social and economic views in regard to reaching the workingman with the gospel. The Institute grew out of tumultuous times and had the broad purpose of reaching the working classes.
The Bible Institute grew out of Moody’s past interests, the concerns of his Chicago friends, and the economic conditions of Chicago. Its foundation brought to sharp focus the wedding of Moody’s social conservatism and his evangelistic views.
Past Concerns of Moody
On January 27, 1886, Moody was reported to have said, “For twenty-five years I have made this question of what shall be done for the working men my study. It has been my very life.”1 As a Sunday school organizer, Y.M.C.A. promoter, a church founder, and a revivalist, one of his chief concerns was how to evangelize the so-call “unsaved masses”–laborers, industrial workers, immigrants, and the poor–that seemed to comprise such a large percentage of the population in the cities. Out of this context of long experience with and concern for urban evangelism grew Moody’s plan for his new work.
Chicago Friends of Moody
Some of Moody’s friends in Chicago had always hoped that the revivalist would return to their city and spread the gospel in some more permanent way than by a brief revival campaign. One of these supporters was Miss Emma Dryer, a highly educated woman who had started a school of Bible work in Moody’s Church in the spring of 1873, even before Moody left for England.2 Her work included a half-time school for “children who cannot attend the public schools,” a weekly sewing school for women, and a program of evangelism involving house-to-house visitation, women’s prayer meetings, and tract distribution.3 Whenever Moody was in Chicago, Miss Dryer confronted him about founding a “Bible Institute” for training those who had never been to college and as a center evangelistic activity in the surrounding slums.4 She claimed that Moody had uprooted her from the head of the faculty of the Illinois State Normal University after the Chicago Fire for this purpose but had run off to Europe and forgotten.5 In 1876 and again during a lightning visit in 1883 Moody had publicly talked about such a plan, but nothing had emerged beyond a few young women selected by Miss Dryer.6
Several Chicago residents sympathized with Miss Dryer. However, they were undecided as to whether the institute should be an order of deaconnesses for city work or a school for the preparation of workers for worldwide missions.7
Among Moody’s Chicago friends were a group of businessmen with more than ordinary financial resources. They also were ready to stand behind any proposal Moody might make to advance his cause in the city. Among this group were men like Burlington W. Harvey, a millionaire lumber dealer, E. G. Keith and Nathaniel S. Bouton, bankers and real estate investors; John V. Farwell, a wealthy merchant; and the family of Cyrus H. McCormick.8
Suddenly in 1886 the evangelist came to Chicago to launch a new project in evangelism that would meet the desires of his Chicago friends. On January 22, 1886, in the Loop at a noon meeting especially designed to attract the city’s businessmen, Moody spoke at length on “City Evangelism.”9 In his speech he laid out his plans for a training school for Christian workers for city missions. With characteristic boldness he challenged the businessmen in his audience to raise $250,000. “Spend $50,000 on a building, and put out the balance at interest, and from the income you could support a training school for workers.”10 However, Moody would not commit himself further to the project until the money was raised.
Without question Moody’s old Chicago associates had much to do with his returning to Chicago to assume additional responsibilities. However, economic conditions in Chicago at the time help to explain his timing and his emphasis. When Moody and his associates spoke of the new project, a new note of urgency was clearly apparent. For several years tension had been developing between working-class groups and the native American managerial segments of the city’s population.11 The depressed conditions of the late seventies had caused intense distress among the laboring classes of Chicago, as it had throughout the country. The large immigrant population of Chicago included a nucleus of men nurtured on anarchism and Marxian dialectic. All of these conditions provided the ground for a strong radical movement to take roots among Chicago’s lower classes in the eighties.
Labor Situation in Chicago
After a brief economic revival between 1881and 1884 Chicago followed the rest of the nation into a new tailspin. As wages tumbled and unemployment rose, strikes again became common in 1884 and 1885; they centered at the Pullman Palace Car Company and at Cyrus McCormick’s harvester works. A renewed interest in the eight-hour day, first advocated vigorously in the 1860's, also aroused working circles in the city. In early 1886 tension again developed between management and labor at the McCormick Plant. The conflict smoldered until early May when discontent finally climaxed in the open violence and horror of the Haymarket riot. As a result, Moody and his friends looked fearfully to the future, seeing in these violent protests a threat to law and order and their own favored positions in society.12
The task of urban evangelization now took on added importance. In March of 1886 Moody expressed unequivocally his opinions on the matter, “Either these people are to be evangelized or the leaven of communism and infidelity will assume such enormous proportions that it will break out in a reign of terror such as this country has never known. It don’t take a prophet or a son of a prophet to see these things. You can hear the muttering of the coming convulsion even now, if you open your ears and eyes.”13
The evangelist’s friends agreed entirely. In a letter written to publicize Moody’s return, Turlington W. Harvey, one of the revivalist’s chief advisers in Chicago, sought to explain why religious people in the city should give the new venture strong support. Harvey concluded that “the depressing consciousness of the extent and danger of the communistic element in our midst” had caused “many earnest Christian people” to feel that “the only way to convert this dangerous element into peaceful helpful citizens, was through the transforming power of Christ.14
There were also some Chicagoans who could express even more lucidly than did the evangelist or his friends the desire of the ruling forces of the city to preserve the status quo through Moody’s new school. In the aftermath of the Haymarket riot, the Chicago Inter-Ocean editor seemed particularly eager to commend Moody’s project to the “better classes.” He applauded the wisdom of the evangelist in seeking donations chiefly from wealthy men and women who not only had “a large and generous way of looking at things,” but also “great property interests in the city.” The editorial writer concluded by stating, “A great institution like this proposed by Mr. Moody . . . would . . . do more than any array or demonstration of outward force possibly could to make life safe, property secure, citizenship honorable, and a home desirable in Chicago.”15
Wedding of Social Conservatism and Evangelism
In the foundation of Moody Bible Institute the joining of Moody’s evangelism and conservatism on social issues stood starkly revealed. Such an attitude had always been implicit in Moody’s thought, but not until this moment in history did he reveal his position so clearly. However, his attitude varied little from that of most evangelical Protestants in the eighties. Protestant churches at that period were often conservative in their response to the new problems of widespread labor unrest and social radicalism. Moody’s views thus fitted the general protestant pattern. Indeed, it was typical of his ability to express often the ideas of the respectable elements in society, people who had always given him strong support. His line of argument is a revealing commentary both on the motivations which lay behind the founding of the Bible Institute and on the evangelist’s viewpoint toward current social questions.16
The Purpose of the School
The Bible Institute’s purpose was to train laymen who would fill a needed gap in Christian mission by reaching the working class. The Institute’s training program would have a practical bent.
Moody was fairly clear as to the broad purposes of his new school. He hoped the institution would produce lay workers without seminary degrees, yet with some formal theological training, who would go into city mission work. “I am not seeking to make any short cut to the ministry.” Moody said. “I do not consider this work to be in conflict with the work of the theological seminaries.”17
To Develop “Gapmen”
Indeed, Moody wanted to do a task that no theological seminary had yet conceived of doing; he wanted to train an army of lay workers. Appropriately enough, Moody named these followers “gapmen.” According to the evangelist they would be “men who know the Word” and who would “go into the shops and meet these bareheaded infidels and skeptics,” to appeal to them “in the name of Jesus Christ” in order that their hearts would “soften under His precious Gospel.”18 Moody’s “gapmen” were to fill a “gap” in Christian outreach that was not being met by the professional clergy. He declared that “One great purpose we have in view in the Bible Institute is to raise up men and women who will be willing to lay their lives alongside of the laboring class and the poor and bring the gospel to bear upon their lives.”19 The gapmen were to reach the workingman with the gospel.
A little over three decades later, during the height of the “Red Scare” in 1920, Moody Bible Institute, appealing for funds in a religious journal, ran a two-page advertisement in which it described itself as “The Answer to Labor Unrest” where “‘agitators’ for righteousness” were training to combat the “agitators of class hatred and revolutionary radicalism” abroad in the land.20
To Have a Practical Emphasis
In Moody’s eye the school would have a practical emphasis. He described the program of the new school as “practical work” in learning how to reach the masses.”21 Although students were to study carefully the English Bible,22 Moody saw no need to burden them with certain intellectual frills then widely prevalent in the seminaries. “Never mind the Greek and Hebrew,” he declared. “Give them plain English and good Scripture. It is the sword of the Lord and cuts deep.”23 The evangelist’s vision of the school’s total program continued in this vein. After Bible lectures in the morning, the afternoons and evenings of the student were to be spent in preaching and other missions of evangelism throughout Chicago.24 Moody also wanted to give great emphasis to the study of music.25 With such a program emphasizing practical work, Moody was confident that there would soon be an anniversary meeting that would “fill Farwell Hall with working men who have been converted.”26
On September 26, 1889, “The Chicago Bible Institute” formally began.27 By the time of Moody’s death the public relations department of the Institute was contending and not without some justification that the school was the “West Point of Christian Work.”28 From its beginnings up until the present day the emphasis has been on practical, applied Christianity which its founder sought to give the school from its earliest days.
The early history and underlying purposes of the Chicago training school reflected in many ways how Moody hoped to fulfill his social philosophy in relation to the workingman. When viewed in the broad context of the evangelist’s thought and work, the Bible Institute represented no major variation in his basic point of view concerning labor. In 1886 he argued the necessity of his school as a counter force to radicalism and unrest among the laboring classes. This conservatism on social and economic issues was a point of view which Moody carried with him from “the Sands,” to his new Institute, to his death.
No comments:
Post a Comment