Prohibitionists. Good guys or bad guys?

[ragpicker]

I did read the whole thing. "Predatory liquor trust" sounds like a lot of nonsense. There were thousands of small breweries, wineries, and distilleries across America prior to prohibition. It was the quintessential small or medium American business prior to prohibition. Every town and city had small breweries. It was only after prohibition that big businesses like Coors and Budweiser gained a stranglehold.

You might want to brush up on your history a bit. I wouldn’t know anything about it either, if I hadn’t become intrigued with the historical Mennonites’ involvement in alcohol production. But then, I wouldn’t be posting about it either.

[Josh]

Prohibitionism was part and parcel part of first wave feminism, which the article briefly touched on. It bore nothing but bad fruit.

Essentially, the thinking was:

- Holiness preachers taught us that alcohol causes men to sin (technically true).
- When men use alcohol, they beat their wives, don’t provide for their cultures, etc. (technically true).
- If we pass laws against alcohol, men will stop beating their wives.
- If we let women vote, it will help elect politicians who support prohibition.
- Therefore, we need to do whatever we can to allow women to vote and to outlaw alcohol.

Wesleyan Holiness theology combined with universal suffrage and a belief politics can bring about societal salvation really did define 1900s America.

[Szdfan]

I thought it was a pretty decent article and it tracks with what I've understood about the temperance movement. It was frequently a progressive movement that tried to deal with social problems by banning alcohol -- it's later that it was taken up by religious conservatives who opposed alcohol for moral reasons.

I think Prohibition was well-intentioned, but caused more problems than it solved. Social problems defy easy solutions.

[HondurasKeiser]

The same author of the Politico piece wrote this book:

Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition

This is from the Introduction:

As someone who has been fascinated and horrified by the Progressive Movement, I think he may be on to something (though he clearly has a soft-spot for progressive reforms that I think is quite wrong). The typical reading of Prohibition though, that it was a puritanical movement foisted on an unsuspecting public by Bible-thumping fundamentalists seems too simplistic and easy. Yes, there were fundamentalist Christians in the Temperance/Prohibition crusade and there was clearly a lot of Christian imagery used as well but at a time when everyone that was anyone was a Christian of some stripe; the use of Christian symbols and images and songs and meetings to accomplish social or political ends should be expected (see: William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech). That there was a convergence between fundamentalist Christians and Progressive Social Gospelers is interesting but not unremarkable, think Moral Majority-types and certain Andrea Dworkin-style feminists "working together" in their crusade against porn. Nevertheless, Prohibition was a progressive reform movement, just like Abolition of the Garrison-types, just like Prison and Mental Hospital reform of the Dorothea Dix-types, just like Education reform of the Horace Mann-types. These were progressive-minded, elite (I say that non-pejoratively) and middle class-led movements that were peopled by Social Gospelers that were slowly losing their belief in the supernatural aspects of traditional Christianity thanks to the explosion of the social sciences in Prussia and Darwin's Theory among others but who nevertheless were unwilling to shed the outward trappings of religion or the ground of Christian moral teaching that so permeated the culture. For the Social Gospel Progressives, Jesus qua man was teaching us a new moral path for the remaking of society. Sin was found in structures, institutions and society-at-large, not in the person. Their mission then was not to evangelize people so that they might be freed from sin but to remake society so that people might be freed from oppressive systems. In the theological world this was the great liberal-fundamentalist split that affected so many Christian groups including our own - and as RP points out, was around the time that "Mennonites don't drink" became normative and "The Seven Ordinances" became something akin to holy writ. As a side note, that this was also a period of intense international missionary fervor is really interesting and I am sure there's a convergence there as well but I don't know what it is.

Ken's rejoinder that "religion and politics" don't mix get's it half right. All political positions are necessarily informed by moral-ethical frameworks. No position; on abortion, or gay marriage or even tax codes are amoral - the Liberal (classical or otherwise) pretense to a "Neutral or Naked Public Square" is a lie wrapped in a platitude. Moral-ethical frameworks themselves need to be grounded in something beyond positive propositions. That is to say, they need to refer to something transcendent, other-worldly, religious. Otherwise, with Nietzsche we agree that they're just made up, ever-shifting and about raw grabs for power. Tocqueville noted this particularly well when he surveyed our early republic. There may have been varied and sundry forms of democratic participation but all were grounded in a broad religious consensus that was clearly Christian in nature and substance. His warning to us then was that:

...religious belief “was (is) inseparable from free government and free public life because it was the channel of a self-imposed moral restraint that shaped and, in so doing, liberated the individual for participation in the republic.” The collapse of religious authority necessary to sustain the institutions that engage in ethical formation fuels a political crisis in turn. That crisis helps to generate a deepening crisis in self-formation, in the very standing of the self itself. And so on. - Jean Bethke Elshtain, The Hedgehog Review

The Progressives use of religion in its movement for social reform then is a novel one, not for it's use of or grounded-ness in religion per se but for the manner in which it was deployed. Inasmuch as the Progressives or Social Gospelers took a progressive or liberal or critical turn against traditional Christian theology but were unwilling to leave Christianity tout court, their politics became their religion. After all, that was the very purpose of Jesus' social teachings, to remake and reform an oppressive sinful society. Here's the really interesting part for me: This is where the Hegelian Dialectic rings true. In response to a positive or progressive movement away from heretofore agreed upon norms and values, the Christian traditionalists, people like William Jennings Bryan, and Daniel Kauffman reacted by swinging towards fundamentalism in theology, a kind of "scientific" or systematic delineation of doctrine, strangely similar to the Progressive love of science, systematization and efficiency. In politics they slowly adopted the Progressives' use of religion-as-motivation so that for a time each side was engaged in "religion and politics". Many of the Progressives though, and certainly their children and grandchildren, eventually shed all pretending to a kind of religious belief such that they were left with progressive reforming impulses devoid of religious language and the other side, the slow-to-react conservatives, morphed into the Religious Right. They may be conservative or traditional in disposition and temperament but in action they are progressive or progressively reactionary.

[mike]

In response to a positive or progressive movement away from heretofore agreed upon norms and values, the Christian traditionalists, people like William Jennings Bryan, and Daniel Kauffman reacted by swinging towards fundamentalism in theology, a kind of "scientific" or systematic delineation of doctrine, strangely similar to the Progressive love of science, systematization and efficiency. In politics they slowly adopted the Progressives' use of religion-as-motivation so that for a time each side was engaged in "religion and politics". Many of the Progressives though, and certainly their children and grandchildren, eventually shed all pretending to a kind of religious belief such that they were left with progressive reforming impulses devoid of religious language and the other side, the slow-to-react conservatives, morphed into the Religious Right. They may be conservative or traditional in disposition and temperament but in action they are progressive or progressively reactionary.

Conservative Anabaptists have traditionally eschewed both of these paths, and rightly so.

What is interesting is that, all this time later, many conservative groups count Daniel Kauffman's systematic theology as one of their core documents.

[HondurasKeiser]

In response to a positive or progressive movement away from heretofore agreed upon norms and values, the Christian traditionalists, people like William Jennings Bryan, and Daniel Kauffman reacted by swinging towards fundamentalism in theology, a kind of "scientific" or systematic delineation of doctrine, strangely similar to the Progressive love of science, systematization and efficiency. In politics they slowly adopted the Progressives' use of religion-as-motivation so that for a time each side was engaged in "religion and politics". Many of the Progressives though, and certainly their children and grandchildren, eventually shed all pretending to a kind of religious belief such that they were left with progressive reforming impulses devoid of religious language and the other side, the slow-to-react conservatives, morphed into the Religious Right. They may be conservative or traditional in disposition and temperament but in action they are progressive or progressively reactionary.

Conservative Anabaptists have traditionally eschewed both of these paths, and rightly so.

What is interesting is that, all this time later, many conservative groups count Daniel Kauffman's systematic theology as one of their core documents.

I read through Dwight Gingerich's work-in-progress essay on the 7 Ordinances that OJ posted last week and found it fascinating. I remember someone else posted a doctoral thesis written by ???? about 2 years ago about the fundamentalist turn in the Mennonite Church.

[HondurasKeiser]

Found it: https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/handle/10012/3441/Thesis_The_Effects_of_Fundamentalism.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

[HondurasKeiser]

In response to a positive or progressive movement away from heretofore agreed upon norms and values, the Christian traditionalists, people like William Jennings Bryan, and Daniel Kauffman reacted by swinging towards fundamentalism in theology, a kind of "scientific" or systematic delineation of doctrine, strangely similar to the Progressive love of science, systematization and efficiency. In politics they slowly adopted the Progressives' use of religion-as-motivation so that for a time each side was engaged in "religion and politics". Many of the Progressives though, and certainly their children and grandchildren, eventually shed all pretending to a kind of religious belief such that they were left with progressive reforming impulses devoid of religious language and the other side, the slow-to-react conservatives, morphed into the Religious Right. They may be conservative or traditional in disposition and temperament but in action they are progressive or progressively reactionary.

Conservative Anabaptists have traditionally eschewed both of these paths, and rightly so.

What is interesting is that, all this time later, many conservative groups count Daniel Kauffman's systematic theology as one of their core documents.

You're absolutely right that the Anabaptists have traditionally avoided involvement in politics and I did not mean to imply that Daniel Kauffman, by dint of the fact that he took a fundamentalist turn in theology necessarily took an activist, conservative turn into politics (anymore than I was holding up Mr. Bryan as a theologian). Those were simply the first two reactionaries against the Social Gospel that popped into my head.

[mike]

In response to a positive or progressive movement away from heretofore agreed upon norms and values, the Christian traditionalists, people like William Jennings Bryan, and Daniel Kauffman reacted by swinging towards fundamentalism in theology, a kind of "scientific" or systematic delineation of doctrine, strangely similar to the Progressive love of science, systematization and efficiency. In politics they slowly adopted the Progressives' use of religion-as-motivation so that for a time each side was engaged in "religion and politics". Many of the Progressives though, and certainly their children and grandchildren, eventually shed all pretending to a kind of religious belief such that they were left with progressive reforming impulses devoid of religious language and the other side, the slow-to-react conservatives, morphed into the Religious Right. They may be conservative or traditional in disposition and temperament but in action they are progressive or progressively reactionary.

Conservative Anabaptists have traditionally eschewed both of these paths, and rightly so.

What is interesting is that, all this time later, many conservative groups count Daniel Kauffman's systematic theology as one of their core documents.

You're absolutely right that the Anabaptists have traditionally avoided involvement in politics and I did not mean to imply that Daniel Kauffman, by dint of the fact that he took a fundamentalist turn in theology necessarily took an activist, conservative turn into politics (anymore than I was holding up Mr. Bryan as a theologian). Those were simply the first two reactionaries against the Social Gospel that popped into my head.

Sure. There are those who question whether Kauffman's fundamentalism was the some of basis for the mainstreaming of the larger Mennonite church (part of which involved political activism), and thus possibly shouldn't be embraced by conservative Anabaptists today who don't want to head the same direction as Kauffman's successors.

[Beau Michel]

Prohibition was a mistake. At best its proponents were well intentioned. In reality they were misguided. Sin is in the drunkeness (lingering long at the wine) not the drink. A case of professing Christians going over and above Scripture.