Last night, while at a party for a friend’s birthday, the conversation turned to the history of fundamentalism. As it does.
The host was Tim Gloege, and as he was mixing drinks (an art he’s perfected over the years), Tim was asked by a guest about his first book. Tim, as some of you may know, wrote one of the most important books on the history of fundamentalism and early twentieth-century evangelicalism: Guaranteed Pure. I listened in as Tim launched into an extended summary of his research.
After dodging out to field a quick call, I made it back just in time for my favorite part: what fundamentalism has to do with Quaker oatmeal.
Everything, it turns out.
Back in 2015, when his book first came out, I interviewed Tim over at the Calvin History Department Blog and asked him to explain.
Q: What does Quaker oatmeal have to do with American evangelicalism?
More than you might think. The founder and president of Quaker Oats, Henry Crowell, also served as president of Moody Bible Institute for nearly three decades. Business historians remember Crowell for his breakfast food empire built by transforming oatmeal-as-commodity, sold at the market rate, into Quaker Oats, the trademarked product sold at a premium. The key to his strategy was leveraging concerns over tainted food to prejudice consumers against the traditional open barrel. Then, using colorful packaging and massive promotional campaigns, he offered a sealed box emblazoned with a smiling Quaker as the wholesome alternative.
This is where the cats come in.
Back in the day, most Americans bought their oatmeal scooped out of a barrel. It was affordable. It was fine. But Crowell wanted to change that. Having just invested in his own mill, Crowell decided to package his oats and advertise them as a superior product.
To convince consumers to pay a premium for his packaged, branded oats, Crowell worked to ensure the quality of his product, but he also worked to instilling doubt in the minds of consumers about his competition by manufacturing fear over the quality of bulk oats. Quaker Oats were “guaranteed pure,” but who really knew where the oats in the barrel came from?
According to Gloege, Quaker Oats promoters engaged in their own “investigative reporting,” telling stories of “a retailer sitting ‘on the nice, soft flakes,’ pocket knife in hand, fingernail ‘trimmings falling into Rolled Oats to be retailed at 4 cents a pound.” And of another retailer who kept the barrel “in a ‘nice, warm, sunny window’” that was “a perfect bed for a ‘Tabby Cat. Ten pounds of oats with cat hairs for 35 cents” (Guaranteed Pure, 174-75).
By denigrating their competition, Quaker Oats created brand loyalty. They also created more distance between producer and consumer. Previously, trust in business was maintained through personal relationships; consumers knew their retailers, and retailers their producers. Now, the notion of quality—legitimate or not—could be sold. Guaranteed purity guranteed profit, especially when contrasted with impurity—real or imagined.
But what does this have to do with evangelicalism? Back to Tim:
At Moody Bible Institute, Crowell applied these same strategies to religion. He was concerned by the growing influence of Biblical higher criticism and other liberal “impurities” in mainline Protestantism. To combat it, he used the image of Moody as a religious trademark of sorts to promote a non-denominational Protestant orthodoxy, guaranteed pure. But much like Quaker Oats, this was an “old-time-religion” in name only. On many key points it was a radically modern “orthodoxy,” grounded not in doctrine or creed, but a personal relationship with God, a business-minded approach to reading the Bible, and saving souls.
The history of twentieth-century evangelicalism can be understood as, among other things, a branding operation. As in the oatmeal business, driving consumers to your product is much more effective if you can characterize competing products not just as alternatives, but as tainted. As dangerous. Poisonous, even. Branding your own product not only as “pure” but also as “traditional” has the added advantage of obscuring the innovation (or even corruption) of the product you’re selling. It’s great for amassing profits and power.
These same dynamics are at work in American evangelicalism today. The movement consists primarily in a network of independent churches and parachurch organizations that are structured like corporations. They advocate for an “orthodoxy” that is impossible to define or homogenize; rather it resides in a malleable set of attitudes, assumptions, and interpretations of religious experiences. This orthodoxy is validated either by charismatic leaders, or caricatures of historical figures and movements. And for every organization that might go under—whether by a change in leadership, irrelevance, or indiscretion—there are always new spiritual entrepreneurs to step in. It was this corporately branded system of “orthodoxy” that I argue MBI pioneered in the early twentieth century.
The history of modern evangelicalism is in many ways a history of gatekeeping. (Keep your eyes out for Isaac Sharp’s forthcoming The Other Evangelicals to see how this played out.) But the “today” Tim refers to above was 2015, so let’s bring this up to our present day.
In the Trump era, we’ve seen heated intra-evangelical battles to police the boundaries of evangelicalism and define the brand. In the face of MAGA evangelicalism, evangelicals like Beth Moore, Russell Moore, David French, Michael Gerson and Pete Wehner continue to insist that “this is not who we are.” Those embedded most deeply in the evangelical world have paid the highest price for their their dissent.
On the other side, the pro-Trump Christian nationalist wing of evangelicalism has worked to paint anti-Trump evangelicals as corrupt, as “regime theologians,” as not really true evangelicals, and, by extention, not true Christians.
What strikes me most about this discourse is not the fact that there are fundamental disagreements between evangelical factions. Nor that there is a power play over who gets to define “true evangelicalism” or “true Christianity.” There is nothing new here.
It’s the smear tactics that are most striking to me.
If we think of what is now playing out in the internecine battles over evangelicalism, it may be helpful to keep in mind the cats in the barrel. Given the stakes of the debate, it’s startling how little serious theological or intellectual conversation characterizes this conversation among many of its chief combatants—especially on one of the two sides. Instead, it’s one filled with mischaracterizations, projections, and attempted character assassinations. Why engage in serous conversation about the truth of your assertions—the quality of your product—when you can just spread rumors about cats in the oatmeal?
This isn’t the first time I’ve noted this tactic—misrepresenting and maligning one’s political and theological opponents in order to build a build a false victimization narrative and justify one’s own militant and authoritarian tactics. But once you see it, it’s hard to miss the frequency with which these tactics are being employed by certain factions. Especially when they keep popping up on your Twitter feed.
A couple of days ago I saw a tweet maliging Paul Miller and myself, likening us to Julias Streicher—the virulent Nazi anti-semite and founder of Der Stuermer who was executed after Nuremberg for his crimes. (Paul, by the way, is a higly respected professor at Georgetown who recently published The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism, a conservative Christian crtique of Christian nationalism.)
This week I’ve watched attempts to smear respected evangelical theologian Michael Bird for saying that he preferred Biden over Trump. I’d provide links but the tweets smearing Mike are now “protected.” Here’s a screenshot of one of many, for a sense of the tone:
But wait, speaking of President Biden, doesn’t this criticism apply equally to him? After all, we just saw the Democratic president calling out the “semi-fascism” of MAGA Republicans on national television. Isn’t this just a both-sides phenomenon?
It could be. But this is where branding needs to be carefully analyzed in terms of evidence.
Sometimes, there might in fact be cats sunning themselves in the oatmeal.
Are Paul Miller and I in fact channeling the evil of one of the most notorious war criminals of the twentieth century? A charge like that warrants a careful examination of evidence supporting (or refuting) such an assertion.
Are MAGA Republicans semi-fascists? That would depend on how closely the behavior of the MAGA faction of the Republican party aligns with the tactics of fascism as identified by historians and political scientists.
It is at the level of evidence and reasoning where our attention should be focused. It’s easy to fall into the habit of outrage, slinging accusations back and forth, engaging in the delicate dance of throwing vicious punches one moment and claiming victimization the next. What is needed isn’t to retreat from incendiary conversations, but rather to insist on a careful examination of evidence.
Those who refuse to back up their allegations with sober and well-evidenced reasoning are just trying to sell you something. And they’re playing a dangerous game.
I read this column by Cary Clack earlier today and took note of this paragraph for future conversations (full column below) : "State Board of Education member Marisa B. Perez-Diaz, a mother of young children, asked Jenna to be more precise in her objections.
“Be specific about what you’re talking about,” Perez-Diaz said, “so that we understand that you actually have a legitimate concern or it’s not something you’re just hearing and reading and repeating.”
Sunday's column.
Clack: What, exactly, is harming students? It’s not Gandhi or CRT
San Antonio Express-News
Sep. 2, 2022
In the 2010 movie “Tooth Fairy,” action superstar, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson plays a minor league hockey player who, after sprouting wings one night and becoming a tooth fairy, confronts the head tooth fairy, played by Julie Andrews, to protest. (I felt silly writing that sentence.)
The Rock’s character asks, “Who’s above you? Gandhi? Who do I talk to?”
Until last week, that was the only connection I was aware of between Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Indian leader who is history’s greatest thinker and practitioner of nonviolence, and the tooth fairy, the magical being who exchanges cash for fallen teeth.
At a Texas State Board of Education meeting about the social studies curriculum for K-12 students, the mother of a student was worried about her child learning about that infamous symbol of critical race theory: Gandhi.
“This revision wants to teach a first grader who is still putting notes to the tooth fairy under her pillow about following Gandhi’s lead to a peaceful protest,” said the mother, identified as Jenna. “A first grader! CRT is already rampant and baked into our curriculum, and we don’t want to be good little global citizens where our borders are considered a military zone.”
I don’t have the space to unpack all she has managed to fold into that statement. Nor am I the best person to turn to if you don’t want American children learning about world historical figures from other countries.
In 1986, when my oldest nephew was 2, I taught him to say “Mandela” at a time when many American adults weren’t aware of Nelson Mandela, the long imprisoned Black South African leader who few thought would ever be released. (If Jenna’s child is blessed with the opportunity to study Gandhi, she’ll learn South Africa was his training ground before he led India to peaceful independence from the British empire.)
But Gandhi had nothing to do with critical race theory. He was assassinated in 1948, decades before CRT emerged as an intellectual framework.
And CRT isn’t rampant. Not in the first grade, fourth grade or any grade through high school. Jenna believes it is, and she is upset because of politicians such as Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who are so intent on wanting her to believe they are knights on white horses slaying the dark, dangerous, dragon that is critical race theory that they’re banning something that has never been taught in Texas classrooms.
State Board of Education member Marisa B. Perez-Diaz, a mother of young children, asked Jenna to be more precise in her objections.
“Be specific about what you’re talking about,” Perez-Diaz said, “so that we understand that you actually have a legitimate concern or it’s not something you’re just hearing and reading and repeating.”
Jenna accused Perez-Diaz of belittling her, which wasn’t the case.
Perez-Diaz’s request should be asked of anyone, especially politicians, when they demagogue about CRT. What, specifically, do they mean by critical race theory?
In what Texas school districts, specifically, has critical race theory been taught?
Which writers, do they believe, are proponents of critical race theory?
What are the books they’ve read that advocate critical race theory?
Despite the restrictions in SB 3, passed last year by the Texas Legislature to keep so-called critical race theory out of public schools, the social studies curriculum does require students to have an understanding of, among other things, the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850; the history of Native Americans; the Indian Removal Act; the 13th,14th, and 15th amendments of the Constitution; the history of white supremacy; César Chávez and Dolores Huerta; and Martin Luther King Jr., often called the “American Gandhi.”
If topics about race are required to be taught in Texas K-12 schools, and if critical race theory isn’t being taught in Texas K-12 schools, what is it that CRT alarmists want banned?
And what’s wrong with Gandhi? A child can write notes to the tooth fairy and still follow the wisdom of a man who wrote: “It is a bad habit to say that another man’s thoughts are bad and ours only are good and that those holding different views from ours are the enemies of the country.”
This is, as always, very helpful.
The reference to fundamentalism strikes a chord for me. I grew up in the ‘60s and ‘70s within that movement (as we called it at the time) and the mindset is very familiar. Perhaps that background causes me to see it behind every tree, but it seems to be a framework that explains a lot of our corrupted discourse in politics as well as religion.
It’s worth pointing out that I’m not talking about fundamentalist theology/dogma. That stands or falls based on different standards.
I am talking about a mindset that took over that camp and gave rise to the trope of the “fighting fundamentalist.”
The main characteristics are an obsession with purity and separation from anyone who fails to meet our personal standard.
It’s ultimately a corrosive attitude that leads to shrinking in-groups and constant splintering.
But it’s a common development any time a group of people have closely held beliefs that they are serious about. It’s so common that we would do well to be alert to signs of it within our own groups, to educate people about the risks and perils of falling into it, and to be ready to name it and call it out when we see it.