American Gandhi. Leilah Danielson

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СКАЧАТЬ us from within,’’ such as racism and economic exploitation. Referring to ‘‘serious labor disturbances in Lawrence, in New York, in Paterson, in Little Falls, in West Virginia, in Northern Michigan, in Colorado,’’ he rejected the notion that revolutionary agitators were to blame: ‘‘The only trouble with [them] from Jesus’ point of view is that they are not half revolutionary enough, for they are only tinkering away at the outward machinery of life; he would strike at the heart of man and take out of it the very desire for money, for ease, for power, for honor, which creates the outward order of industry and society.’’⁶⁸ This idea—that socialization, to be truly effective, must be accompanied by a change of heart—would be repeated throughout Muste’s long career and points to one of the central differences between Christian socialists and their secular comrades.⁶⁹

      Muste’s evolving politics involved a reworking of his identity. Educated in the imperial culture of ‘‘muscular Christianity,’’ his sermons show a preoccupation with squaring his new ideals of peace and justice with an ideology of white manhood that stressed martial prowess and racial struggle. ‘‘Many people seem to think that war is hard and makes a rugged, noble race,’’ he observed, and that ‘‘peace is easy and makes degenerate men.’’ While he conceded that war might develop certain virtues, it also involved giving into base instinct; a ‘‘real man,’’ by contrast, strived for self-control, the respect of his neighbors, and cared for rather than exterminated the weak. Moreover, if anything, modern warfare spread ‘‘degeneracy’’ by killing off the ‘‘finest men’’ and leaving the ‘‘less fit’’ to breed. Social Darwinism thus continued to shape his thought even as he groped toward a more pacific male identity.⁷⁰

      These two sermons, delivered about a year after Europe plunged into the Great War, also show a growing preoccupation with the threat of militarism and war. The European conflict had seemed distant and unthreatening at first, as President Woodrow Wilson promised to keep the United States out of the conflict. But, as American entry grew more likely, Muste, along with his fellow religious liberals, was forced to confront the question of whether or not he could reconcile his Christian faith and participation in war. Muste was on uncertain ground here; even his courses at Union had never given him the ‘‘inkling that there might be such a thing as a pacifist interpretation of the Gospel.’’⁷¹ In fact, in the fall of 1914, he had preached a sermon for the veterans of the Spanish-American War in which he ‘‘made the expected, conventional observations that war is a terrible and wicked thing . . . but when the strong attack the weak, and democracy and religion are in danger, then, of course, as good Christians, we must go bravely, though reluctantly, into battle.’’⁷²

      On one level, Muste’s conversion to pacifism was simply a question of ‘‘Christian conscience.’’ As he recalled of those difficult days, he ultimately ‘‘could not reconcile the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, the whole concept of the cross as the way of redemption, with war.’’⁷³ Yet Muste’s pacifism must also be understood within the cultural context of New England and liberal Protestantism more broadly. His discussion club, for example, had introduced him to a serious exploration of Christian mysticism and particularly the Quaker Rufus Jones whose work celebrated the Quakers and their peace testimony as illustrative of mystical religion in action.⁷⁴ Sperry, Parke, and other members of his social group were also deeply involved in Boston’s active peace movement, and they had invited Muste to attend various antiwar meetings, including one in early 1916 that featured the founders of the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). Soon thereafter, Muste, together with Sperry and Parke, joined the FOR; their first meeting was held in Bliss Perry’s Boston apartment.⁷⁵

      Founded in 1914 by the English Quaker Henry Hodgkin, the FOR was a small yet influential international organization whose members pledged to build ‘‘a world-order based on Love’’ by following the example of ‘‘the life and death of Jesus Christ.’’⁷⁶ Hodgkin had helped to establish an American branch at a conference in Garden City, Long Island in November of 1915, soon after President Wilson initiated a preparedness campaign. The Fellowship was a ‘‘combination of Christian parochialism and expansive sentiment,’’ as one historian has put it aptly.⁷⁷ Its members were exclusively Protestant, with strong roots in the Social Gospel movement, highly educated, and often from elite backgrounds. Many of them had been active in the YMCA, and its statement of principles reflected this evangelical heritage. The organization also had a strong Quaker influence, signified by its commitment to individual spiritual autonomy. As one early statement put it, ‘‘It is intended that members shall work out personally and in their own way, what is involved in their membership. There is no program or theory of social reconstruction to which all are committed. The chief method is a life lived in loyalty to Christ, expressing itself in every activity and relation of life.’’⁷⁸

      The FOR was, in other words, exactly what its name implied: both a fellowship of Christian pacifists, eager to witness for their beliefs, and a political organization committed to using ‘‘the method of Jesus’’ to resolve vexing industrial, racial, and international problems. There was some tension between these two aims, and what exactly was meant by ‘‘the method of Jesus’’ would soon become a matter of intense debate, but in its founding years the FOR functioned as an important source of support and camaraderie for opponents of war.

      In becoming a pacifist in 1916, Muste remained a part of the liberal mainstream, which was largely opposed to American intervention. But all of this changed on April 2, 1917, when President Wilson summoned the Congress and the American people to war, explaining that ‘‘the world must be made safe for democracy.’’ Wilson’s language of American mission was the language of American progressivism, and the majority of progressives and even most self-described ‘‘pacifists’’ shifted from hostility to interventionism to support for the state. For progressives, the war offered an opportunity for reform. The war, John Dewey declared, was ‘‘full of social possibilities’’; it would constrain ‘‘the individualistic tradition’’ and teach ‘‘the supremacy of public need over private possessions.’’⁷⁹

      The Federal Council of Churches, representing the mainline denominations, similarly viewed the war as an opportunity to modernize and liberalize the country and to extend American values to a decadent and corrupt Europe. William Adams Brown, one of Muste’s former professors at Union, headed up the Federal Council’s crusade to uplift the morals of American soldiers and make them ‘‘fit to fight.’’ Other Protestant luminaries such as Harry Emerson Fosdick, Shailer Matthews, Sherwood Eddy, and John Mott also joined the effort. Especially devastating was Brown’s incisive criticism of pacifism in which he suggested that it was ‘‘a kind of fundamentalism.’’ Though he had ‘‘the greatest respect’’ for pacifists, he argued that they were attempting ‘‘to apply an absolute ideal’’ to a progressive, changing society, and thus represented a regression to the orthodoxy and dogmatism against which they had rebelled.⁸⁰

      On one level, progressive optimism was not misplaced; the war offered them the opportunity to rationalize American society and to spread their values to the larger world. At home, the wartime state created agencies like the War Industries Board, which assumed greater control over industrial production, and the National War Labor Policies Board, which adjudicated labor disputes, enacted an eight-hour workday, and guaranteed collective bargaining rights for some industries. Abroad, President Wilson expressed his commitment to constructing a postwar international organization that would prevent war through planned reconstruction, liberalized trade, and democratization, and he welcomed the assistance of liberal internationalists in making his dream a reality.⁸¹

      At the same time, the war exposed the dark side of the modern, managerial state and the imperial assumptions behind Wilson’s idealism. As critic Randolph Bourne predicted in his famous 1917 essay rebuking his idol John Dewey, a war of rival imperialists could not be molded to ‘‘liberal purposes,’’ but would rather empower the least democratic forces in American life.⁸² Perhaps because progressives believed СКАЧАТЬ