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“God Is Not Affected by the Depression”: Pentecostal Missions during the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2011

Heather D. Curtis
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Extract

Near the beginning of his classic depression-era novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck introduces the Reverend Jim Casy, a “Burning Busher” who “used to . . . get the people jumpin' an' talking' in tongues, an' glory-shoutin' till they just fell down and passed out.” But now Casy has given up preaching. “The sperit ain't in the people much no more;” Casy tells his friend Tom Joad, “and worse'n that, the sperit ain't in me no more.” Throughout the novel, Steinbeck underscores the crisis of religious meaning in the face of financial catastrophes confronting families like the Joads—share croppers and over-extended farmers who were forced off their land in dustbowl states such as Oklahoma, traveled west seeking work and better wages in California, only to find themselves struggling to stave off starvation, disease, and despair in crowded makeshift or government camps where they encountered sharp-tongued, fire-baptized believers like Steinbeck's character Lisbeth Sandry, a “deep-down Jesus-lover” who accused them of wickedness and warned that God was watching and smoking out sinners who took pleasure in play acting, devil-dancing, and other “hell-burning” behaviors.

Type
Forum
Information
Church History , Volume 80 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 579 - 589
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2011

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References

1 Steinbeck, John, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Viking Press, 1939), 20–22, 321–22 and 332–33Google Scholar.

2 Handy, Robert T., “The American Religious Depression, 1925–1935,” Church History 29, no. 1 (March 1960): 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Miller, Robert Moats, American Protestantism and Social Issues: 1919–1939 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1958), 116Google Scholar.

4 Handy, “American Religious Depression,” 10.

5 Carpenter, Joel A., “Fundamentalist Institutions and the Rise of Evangelical Protestantism, 1929–1942,” Church History 49, no. 1 (March 1980): 62–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Carpenter, Joel A., Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Carpenter, Joel A. and Shenk, Wilbert R., eds., Earthen Vessels: American Evangelicals and Foreign Missions, 1880–1980 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990)Google Scholar. Robert Mapes Anderson's classic work, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism discusses the development and character of pentecostalism in the depression years, but does not analyze pentecostal attitudes toward the financial crisis in a sustained manner. Grant Wacker's more recent history, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar treats the founding years of the movement—from 1920 to 1925—and mentions the depression only briefly, in reference to Anderson's study (see page 199). McDannell's, ColleenPicturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar includes some discussion of pentecostalism, but the movement is not a central theme of her work. Two recent studies that focus more attention on pentecostal communities during the Great Depression are Roll, Jarod, Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010)Google Scholar, and Sutton, Matthew Avery, “Clutching to ‘Christian America’: Aimee Semple McPherson, the Great Depression, and the Origins of Pentecostal Political Activism,” Journal of Policy History 17, no. 3 (2005): 308–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Cerillo, Augustus, Jr., “Frank Bartleman: Pentecostal ‘Lone Ranger’ and Social Critic,” in Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders, ed. Goff, James R., Jr., and Wacker, Grant (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002), 105–22Google Scholar; and Wacker, Heaven Below, 199.

7 For one such analysis, see Carpenter's description of fundamentalist interpretations of the Great Depression, in Carpenter, Revive Us Again, esp. 89–109.

8 Carmichael, Richard, “This Prodigal Age: Will a Famine Bring the World to Repentance?” Latter Rain Evangel (July 1934): 14–15Google Scholar.

9 Beskin, Nathan Coen, “The Doom of Civilization,” Latter Rain Evangel (July 1932): 3–6 and 23Google Scholar; Reiff, Anna, “The Night Cometh,” Latter Rain Evangel (October 1931): 2Google Scholar; and Reiff, Anna, “1931,” Latter Rain Evangel (January 1931): 2Google Scholar.

10 Reiff, “1931,” 2. See also Reiff, Anna, “The World's Unrest,” Latter Rain Evangel (August 1931): 2 and 23Google Scholar.

11 Reiff, “The Night Cometh,” 2.

12 Williams, Bert, “The Cure for Depression,” Latter Rain Evangel (April 1932): 6–8 and 18–19Google Scholar.

13 Beskin, “Doom of Civilization,” 23.

14 See for example, Carmichael, “This Prodigal Age,” 14–15.

15 “God's Diminishings,” Pentecostal Evangel, 20 January 1934, 4Google Scholar.

16 Pennington, Edith Mae, “Jesus Christ, the Solver of Financial, Physical and Spiritual Problems,” Pentecostal Evangel, 24 September 1932, 1, 7 and 10Google Scholar.

17 Pennington, “Jesus Christ, the Solver,” 1, 7 and 10.

18 Reiff, Anna, Editorial, Latter Rain Evangel (May 1932): 2Google Scholar.

19 Bax, Mabel L., “An Opening in Spain,” Pentecostal Evangel, 30 July 1932, 5 and 11Google Scholar.

20 Perkin, Noel “The Challenge of the Hour,” Pentecostal Evangel, 14 May 1932, 10Google Scholar.

21 For a more detailed explanation of the faith principle of financing, see Curtis, Heather D., Faith in the Great Physician: Suffering and Divine Healing in American Culture, 1860–1900 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), chapter 5Google Scholar.

22 For a fuller account of Assemblies of God missions history, see McGee, Gary B., Miracles, Missions, and American Pentecostalism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2010)Google Scholar.

23 “Our Work Among the Poor,” Glad Tidings Herald (November 1932): 3Google Scholar.

24 Booth-Clibborn, William, “The Pulse of a Dying World,” Latter Rain Evangel (July 1934): 12Google Scholar.

25 “The Thirteenth General Council Meeting,” Pentecostal Evangel, 19 October 1929, 4Google Scholar.

26 Minutes of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, 1929, 39–40.

27 “Financial Report of Missions Department,” Minutes of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, 1931, 69.

28 “Financial Report of the Missions Department,” Minutes of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, 1933, 84.

29 “Extracts from Missionary Letters,” Triumphs of Faith (October 1932): 234Google Scholar.

30 “Extracts from Missionary Letters,” Triumphs of Faith (May 1935): 111–12Google Scholar.

31 See, for example, “Extracts from Missionary Letters,” Triumphs of Faith (March 1932): 66–67Google Scholar; “Extracts from Missionary Letters,” Triumphs of Faith (June 1932): 142–44Google Scholar; “Extracts from Missionary Letters,” Triumphs of Faith (January 1933): 16–17Google Scholar; “Extracts from Missionary Letters,” Triumphs of Faith (May 1935): 111Google Scholar; “A Missionary in Trouble,” Pentecostal Evangel, 26 August 1933, 8Google Scholar; H. C. Ball, “A Blessed Season of Fellowship at the Annual Business Meeting of the Latin American District Council,” Pentecostal Evangel, 14 January 1933, 10–11Google Scholar; Doney, C. W., “A Letter from Egypt,” Pentecostal Evangel, 5 September 1931, 6Google Scholar; Jackson, Cecil, “Proving God in the South Seas,” Pentecostal Evangel, 23 May 1931, 1 and 8–11Google Scholar; Malick, Y. G., “Syria,” Pentecostal Evangel, 2 September 1933, 10Google Scholar; and Bax, “An Opening in Spain,” 5 and 11.

32 Reiff, Anna, Editorial Latter Rain Evangel (October 1932): 2Google Scholar; and Reiff, Anna, “Missionary Report,” Latter Rain Evangel (August 1933): 2 and 11Google Scholar.

33 Reiff, , Editorial, Latter Rain Evangel (October 1932): 2Google Scholar; Reiff, Anna, “Not by Bread Alone,” Latter Rain Evangel (October 1932): 2Google Scholar; and Reiff, Anna; “Will a Nation Reap What She Sows?” Latter Rain Evangel (September 1934): 1Google Scholar.

34 Reiff, Anna, “Are You Feeding Your Soul?” Latter Rain Evangel (February 1931): 2Google Scholar.

35 Montgomery, Carrie Judd, “A Letter from the Editor,” Triumphs of Faith (January 1934): 20Google Scholar.

36 “Our Work Among the Poor,” 3.

37 “Financial Report of Foreign Missions Department,” Minutes of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, 1933, 84–87. Exact amounts of missionary giving are difficult to calculate, as many churches supported missionaries directly in addition to sending contributions to and through the Assemblies of God headquarters. See, for example, the discussion of giving in “Report of Missions Department,” Minutes of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, 1937, 87–89.

38 These figures are based on financial statements included in the Minutes of the General Council of the Assemblies of God for the years 1929–1931, 1931–1933, 1933–1935, 1935–1937, and 1937–1939.

39 Salter, James, “In God's Hands,” Pentecostal Evangel, 14 March 1936, 2Google Scholar.