This book - Centro de Estudos Anglicanos

7EMERGENCE OF THEMODERN CHURCH:1918–1958In the wake of Allied victory in World War I, the hopes of Protestants in theUnited States seemed to reach new heights. Participation in the war had providedan unprecedented stimulus to piety, and church leaders were determined to maintainthat trend in the 1920s. Just as their nation’s successful military effort haddemonstrated the value of organization and centralization, so Protestants recognizedthe importance of increased cooperation in meeting religious goals. Thecreation of the Federal Council of Churches in 1908—an effort designed to “bringthe Christian bodies in America into united service for Christ and the world”—had represented an important first step toward the realization of a unified socialmission. 1 The launching of the Interchurch World Movement (IWM) in 1919 wassimilarly intended to advance the cause of interdenominational unity by bringingall the benevolent and missionary agencies of American Protestantism togetherin a single evangelistic, educational, and fund-raising campaign. Reflecting thesame idealism that inspired the creation of the League of Nations, the IWMoffered (in the words of one of its founders) “the vision of a united church unitinga divided world.” 2Despite the spirit of hopefulness that followed the war, the 1920s were alsomarked by a distinct sense of cultural crisis. The Bolshevik Revolution in Russiain 1917 and the advent of major labor strikes in the United States in 1919 notonly spawned a “red scare” but also revived the expression of virulent nativistsentiments. The “Great Migration” of black southerners to northern cities increasinglyangered white Americans and inspired an upsurge in white-on-black violence.Reborn in 1915, the Ku Klux Klan attained a peak of three million membersin 1923, and its crusade against Roman Catholics, Jews, and immigrants (as wellas African Americans) revealed the depth of conservative Protestant fears aboutsocial change. Even as liberal Protestants attempted to draw closer to one anotherin the first decades of the twentieth century, new theological fault lines materializedwithin their own denominations. Fierce battles between modernists and