How Corporate America Invented Christian America
How one reverend’s big business-backed crusade altered the political landscape.
By Kevin Kruse / Basic Books
The following is an adapted excerpt from Kevin Kruse's new book,
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015).
In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.
Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”
It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.
They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.
Fifield told the industrialists that clergymen would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. They could push back against claims, made often by Roosevelt and his allies, that business had somehow sinned and the welfare state was doing God’s work. The assembled industrialists gave a rousing amen. “When he had finished,” a journalist noted, “rumors report that the N.A.M. applause could be heard in Hoboken.”
It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.
Before the New Deal, the government had never loomed quite so large over business and, as a result, it had never loomed large in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. But in Fifield’s vision, it now cast a long and ominous shadow.He and his colleagues devoted themselves to fighting the government forces they believed were threatening capitalism and, by extension, Christianity. And their activities helped build a foundation for a new vision of America in which businessmen would no longer suffer under the rule of Roosevelt but instead thrive—in a phrase they popularized—in a nation “under God.” In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the Hobby Lobby case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.
***
For much of the 1930s, organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had been searching in vain for ways to rehabilitate a public image that had been destroyed in the Great Depression and defamed by the New Deal. In 1934, a new generation of conservative industrialists took over NAM with a promise to “serve the purposes of business salvation.” The organization rededicated itself to spreading the gospel of free enterprise, vastly expanding its expenditures in the field. As late as 1934, NAM spent a paltry $36,000 on public relations. Three years later, it devoted $793,043 to the cause, more than half its total income. NAM now promoted capitalism through a wide array of films, radio programs, advertisements, direct mail, a speakers bureau and a press service that provided ready-made editorials and news stories for 7,500 local newspapers.
Ultimately, though, industry’s self-promotion was seen as precisely that. Jim Farley, chairman of the Democratic Party, joked that another group involved in this public relations campaign—the American Liberty League—really should have been called the “American Cellophane League.” “First, it’s a DuPont product,” Farley quipped, “And second, you can see right through it.” Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his shots. “It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” he noted soon after the Liberty League’s creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.” Off the record, he joked that the name of the god they worshiped seemed to be “Property.”
As Roosevelt’s quips made clear, the president shrewdly used spiritual language for political ends. In the judgment of his biographer James MacGregor Burns, “probably no American politician has given so many speeches that were essentially sermons rather than statements of policy.” His first inaugural address was so laden with references to Scripture that the National Bible Press published an extensive chart linking his text with the “Corresponding Biblical Quotations.” In a memorable passage, Roosevelt reassured the nation that “the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore the temple to the ancient truths.”
When Roosevelt launched the New Deal, politically liberal clergymen echoed his arguments, championing his proposal for a vast welfare state as simply the Christian thing to do. The head of the Federal Council of Churches, for instance, claimed the New Deal embodied basic Christian principles such as the “significance of daily bread, shelter, and security.” When businessmen realized their economic arguments were no match for Roosevelt’s religious ones, they decided to beat him at his own game.
That’s where Revered Fifield came in. Nicknamed “The Apostle to Millionaires” by a friendly writer, Fifield took over the elite First Congregational Church in Los Angeles in 1935. The minister was well matched to the millionaires in his pews. Politically conservative but doctrinally liberal, he crafted an interpretation of the Bible that catered to his congregation. Notably, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty, and instead assured the elite that their worldly success was a sign of God’s blessings.
Soon after his arrival in Los Angeles, Fifield founded Spiritual Mobilization, an organization whose mission was “to arouse the ministers of all denominations in America to check the trends toward pagan stateism, which would destroy our basic freedom and spiritual ideals.” The organization’s credo reflected the common politics of the millionaires in his congregation: Men were creatures of God imbued with “inalienable rights and responsibilities,” specifically enumerated as “the liberty and dignity of the individual, in which freedom of choice, of enterprise and of property is inherent.” Churches, it asserted, had a solemn duty to defend those rights against the encroachments of the state.
Fifield quickly brought the organization into national politics, gaining attention from leading conservatives across America who were eager to enlist ministers in their fight against the New Deal. Former President Herbert Hoover, deposed by Roosevelt and disparaged by his acolytes, advisedand encouraged Fifield in personal meetings and regular correspondence. “If it would be possible for the Church to make a non-biased investigation into the morals of this government,” Hoover wrote the minister in 1938, “they would find everywhere the old negation of Christianity that ‘the end justifies the means.’” In October 1938, Fifield sent an alarmist tract to more than 70,000 clergymen across the nation, seeking to recruit them in the revolt against Roosevelt. “We ministers have special opportunities and special responsibilities in these critical days,” it began. “America’s movement toward dictatorship has already eliminated checks and balances in its concentration of powers in our chief executive.” Finding the leaflet to his liking, Hoover sent Fifield a warm note of appreciation and urged him to press on.
Within a few years, the minister had the support of not just Hoover but an impressive array of conservative figures in politics, business and religion—“a who’s who of the conservative establishment,” in the words of one observer. As Spiritual Mobilization’s national ambitions grew, Fifield searched for more sponsors to finance the fight. In the mid-1940s, he won a number of powerful new patrons, but none was more important than J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil.
Tall and stiff, with bushy eyebrows, Pew had a stern appearance that matched his attitude. He had previously been involved in anti-New Deal organizations like the Liberty League and now believed the postwar era would witness a renewed struggle for the soul of the nation. Looking over some material from Spiritual Mobilization, Pew decided the organization shared his understanding of what was wrong with America and what needed to be done. But to his dismay, the material offered no agenda for action whatsoever, merely noting that Spiritual Mobilization would send clergymen bulletins and place advertisements but ultimately “leave details” of what to do “to individual ministers.” Pew thought this was no way to run a national operation. “I am frank to confess,” he wrote a confidant, “that if Dr. Fifield has developed a concrete program and knows exactly where he is going and what he expects to accomplish, that conception has never become clearly defined in my mind.”
If Pew felt Fifield’s touch had been too light, he knew a more forceful approach would fail as well. In February 1945, famed industrial consultant Alfred Haake explained to Pew why NAM’s own outreach to ministers had failed. “Of the approximately thirty preachers to whom I have thus far talked, I have yet to find one who is unqualifiedly impressed,” Haake reported. “One of the men put it almost typically for the rest when he said: ‘The careful preparation and framework for the meetings to which we are brought is too apparent. We cannot help but see that it is expertly designed propaganda and that there must be big money behind it. We easily become suspicious.’”
If they wanted to convince clergymen to side with them, industrialists would need a subtler approach. Rather than treating ministers as a passive audience to be persuaded, Haake argued, they should involve them actively in the cause as participants. The first step would be making ministers realize that they, too, had something to fear from the growth of government. “The religious leaders must be helped to discover that their callings are threatened,” Haake argued, by realizing that the “collectivism” of the New Deal, “with the glorification of the state, is really a denial of God.” Once they were thus alarmed, they would readily join Spiritual Mobilization as its representatives and could then be organized more effectively into a force for change both locally and nationally.
***
Reverend Fifield worked to make Spiritual Mobilization out of the ranks of the clergy. The growing numbers of its “minister-representatives” were found in every state, with large concentrations in industrial regions like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. They were overwhelmingly Protestant, though a scattering of priests and rabbis allowed the organization to present itself as part of the new spirit of “Judeo-Christianity.” In the previous decade, this innovative “interfaith” approach had taken shape as a way for liberal clergymen to unite in common social causes. Now, in the postwar era, conservative organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization shrewdly followed suit.
The organization grew rapidly. In February 1947, Fifield reported that in three years he had expanded the mass of their minister-representatives from an initial 400 members to more than 10,000 in all. He set them to work spreading arguments against the “pagan stateism” of the New Deal. “It is time to exalt the dignity of individual man as a child of God,” he urged. “Let’s redouble our efforts.”
Clergymen responded enthusiastically. Many wrote the Los Angeles office to request advertised copies of Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian treatise The Road to Serfdom and anti–New Deal tracts by Herbert Hoover and libertarian author Garet Garrett. Armed with such materials, the minister-representatives transformed secular arguments into spiritual ones and spread them widely. “Occasionally I preach a sermon directly on your theme,” a Midwestern minister wrote, “but equally important, it is in the background of my thought as I prepare all my sermons, meet various groups and individuals.” Everyday activities were echoed by special events. In October 1947, for instance, Spiritual Mobilization held a national sermon competition on the theme “The Perils to Freedom,” with $5,000 offered in prize money. The organization had more than 12,000 minister representatives at that point, but it received twice as many submissions for the competition—representing roughly 15 percent of the entire country’s clergymen.
Pleased with his progress, Fifield’s backers doubled the annual budget. Pew once again set the pace, soliciting donations from officials at 158 corporations, including longstanding supporters of Spiritual Mobilizationsuch as General Motors, Chrysler, National Steel, Firestone Tire and Rubber and Gulf Oil. “A large percentage of ministers in this country are completely ignorant of economic matters and have used their pulpits for the purpose of disseminating socialistic and totalitarian doctrines,” Pew wrote in his appeal. “Much has already been accomplished in the education of these ministers, but a great deal more is left to be done.”
The success of Spiritual Mobilization brought increased funding, but also scorn from progressives. In February 1948, the Nation ranan acidic cover story. “A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America,” it read. “For the most part the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies, but now and then the reactionary side tries to fudge a bit by backing movements which mask their true character and real sponsors. Such a movement is Spiritual Mobilization.” The article detailed the scope of its operations, noting its high-rent offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the hundreds of thousands of pamphlets by pro-business authors it distributed for free. But no one knew who was funding the operation, the Nation warned. In this withering account, Fifield came off as a charlatan who prostrated himself before the “apostles of rugged individualism” to secure his own fame and fortune and, in return, prostituted himself for their needs.
In response, Spiritual Mobilization redoubled its efforts, taking an even more aggressive approach to public relations. In 1949, it launched The Freedom Story, a 15-minute radio program consisting of a dramatic presentation and brief commentary from Fifield. In the original scripts, Fifield made direct attacks on Democratic programs at home, but his lawyer warned him they would lose the “public service” designation that gave them free airtime if he were “too plain spoken” with partisan attacks. Instead, he advised, the minister should make use of foreign examples to illustrate the spreading menace of “creeping socialism” at home. Fifield’s financial backers helped secure free airtime for these programs across the nation. In 1950, The Freedom Story was broadcast on over 500 stations; by late 1951, it aired on more than 800.
Meanwhile, Spiritual Mobilization launched a monthly magazine, Faith and Freedom, showcasing the work of prominent libertarian authors, including Ludwig von Mises, leader of the Austrian School of economics; Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education; and Henry Hazlitt, a founding member of the future American Enterprise Institute. Even though laymen dominated the pages of Faith and Freedom, the journal purposely presented itself as created by ministers for ministers. Spiritual Mobilization had long operated on the principle that clergymen could not be swayed through crude propaganda. “The articulation should be worked out beforehand, of course, and we should be ready to help the thinking of the ministers on it,” Haake noted in one of his early musings, “but it should be so done as to enable them to discover it for themselves.”
Faith and Freedom thus presented itself as a forum in which ministers could disagree freely. But for all of its claims about encouraging debate, the journaldid little to hide its contempt for liberal ministers. The magazine repeatedly denounced the Social Gospel and, just as important, clergymen who invoked it to advocate for the establishment and expansion of welfare state programs. In a typical article, Irving Howard, a Congregationalist minister, darkly noted the “pagan origin of the Social Gospel” in 19th century Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, claiming it was part of a larger “impetus to a shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, [from] individual conversion to social coercion, and from the church to the state.”
With the Republican gains in the midterm elections of 1950, the forces behind Spiritual Mobilization felt emboldened. In an upbeat letter to Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors and one of his ardent supporters, Fifield reflected on the recent returns. “We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country, indicating the feeling that Spiritual Mobilization has had some part in the awakening which was evidenced by the elections,” he wrote. “Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of Freedom under God.”
For Fifield and his associates, the phrase “freedom under God”—contrasted with what they saw as oppression under the federal government—became an effective new rallying cry in the early 1950s. The minister pressed the theme repeatedly in the pages of Faith and Freedom and in his radio broadcasts of The Freedom Story, but he soon found a more prominent means of spreading the message to the American people.
***
In the spring of 1951, Spiritual Mobilization’s leaders struck upon an idea they believed would advance their cause considerably. To mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed for the week surrounding the Fourth of July a massive series of events devoted to the theme of “Freedom Under God.”
To that end, in June 1951, the leaders of Spiritual Mobilization announced the formation of a new Committee to Proclaim Liberty to coordinate their Fourth of July “Freedom Under God” celebrations. Despite its apparent spiritual emphasis, the true goal of the Committee was advancing political conservatism. Its two most prominent members had been brought low by Democratic administrations: Hoover, driven from the White House two decades earlier by Franklin Roosevelt, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, removed from his command in Korea two months earlier by Harry Truman. These conservative icons were joined by military leaders, heads of patriotic groups, conservative legal and political stars, right-wing media figures and outspoken conservatives from the realm of entertainment, such as Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan. But the majority came from corporate America. J. Howard Pew was joined by other business giants, including household names such as Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, James L. Kraft, Henry Luce, Fred Maytag and J.C. Penney, as well as lesser-known leaders at giant corporations including General Motors, Chrysler, U.S. Steel and Gulf Oil.
The committee’s corporate sponsors took out full-page newspaper ads to promote a pinched version of the Declaration. Dropping the founding fathers’ long list of grievances about the absence of effective government in the colonies, the sponsors reprinted just the preamble alone. This approach allowed them to reframe the Declaration as a purely libertarian manifesto, dedicated solely to the removal of an oppressive government.
The San Diego Gas & Electric Company, for instance, encouraged its customers to reread the preamble, which it presented with its editorial commentary running alongside:
These words are the stones upon which man has built history’s greatest work—the United States of America. Remember them well!
“ … all men are created equal … ” That means you are as important in the eyes of God as any man brought into this world. You are made in his image and likeness. There is no “superior” man anywhere.
“ … they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … ” Here is your birthright—the freedom to live, work, worship, and vote as you choose. These are rights no government on earth may take from you.
“ … That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men … ” Here is the reason for and the purpose of government. Government is but a servant—not a master—not a giver of anything.
“ … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed … ” In America, the government may assume only the powers you allow it to have. It may assume no others.
The Committee to Proclaim Liberty also enlisted the nation’s ministers to promote the “Freedom Under God” festivities. Those on Spiritual Mobilization’s mailing list received a prefabricated press release that merely needed clergymen to fill in the blanks with their personal information (“‘The purpose of the Committee,’ the Reverend _________ declared, ‘is to revive a custom long forgotten in America—spiritual emphasis on the 4th of July’”). The committee also established a sermon contest, modeled on the wildly successful “Perils to Freedom” competition of 1947. The 17,000 minister-representatives of the organization were encouraged to compete for cash prizes and other rewards by writing an original sermon on the theme of “Freedom Under God” and delivering it to their congregations on “Independence Sunday,” July 1, 1951.
These sermons were amplified by a program broadcast that same evening over CBS’s national radio network. Cecil B. DeMille worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars. Jimmy Stewart served as master of ceremonies, while Bing Crosby and Gloria Swanson offered short messages of their own. The preamble to the Declaration was read by Lionel Barrymore, who had posed for promotional photos holding a giant quill and looking at a large piece of parchment inscribed with the words “Freedom Under God Will Save Our Country.”
The broadcast featured choral performances of “America” as well as “Heritage,” an epic poem composed by a former leader of the US Chamber of Commerce. Gen. Matthew Ridgway interrupted his duties leading American forces in Korea to send a keynote address from Tokyo. He insisted that the founding fathers had been motivated, in large part, by their religious faith. “For them there was no confusion of thought, no uncertainty of objectives, no doubt as to the road they should follow to their goals,” he said. “Theirs was a deep and abiding faith in God, a faith which is still the great reservoir of strength of the American people in this day of great responsibility for their future and the future of the world.”
The “Freedom Under God” festivities reached a crescendo with local celebrations on the Fourth of July. The Committee to Proclaim Liberty coordinated the ringing of church bells across the nation, timed to start precisely at noon and last for a full 10 minutes. Cities and small towns across the country scheduled their own events around the bell ringing. In Los Angeles, for instance, the city’s civil defense agency sounded its air raid sirens in the first test since their installation, resulting in what one newspaper described as “a scream as wild and proud as that of the American eagle.” As bells chimed across the city, residents were encouraged by the committee “to open their doors, sound horns and blow whistles and ring bells, as individual salutes to Freedom.” After the bell ringing, groups gathered in churches and homes to read the preamble together. Both Mayor Fletcher Bowron and Gov. Earl Warren, like their counterparts in many other cities and states, issued official proclamations that urged citizens, in Warren’s words, to spend the day reflecting upon “the blessings we enjoy through Freedom under God.”
That night, 50,000 residents attended a massive rally at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Organized under the theme “Freedom Under God Needs You,” the night featured eight circus acts, a jet plane demonstration and a fireworks display that the local chapter of the American Legion promised would be the largest in the entire country. Fifield had the honor of offering the invocation for the evening ceremonies, while actor Gregory Peck delivered a dramatic reading of the Declaration’s preamble.
In the end, the Committee to Proclaim Liberty believed, rightly, that its work had made a lasting impression on the nation. “The very words ‘Freedom Under God’ [have] added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term,” the organizers concluded. “It is a significant phrase to people who know that everybody from Stalin on down is paying lip service to freedom until its root meaning is no longer apparent. The term ‘Freedom Under God’ provides a means of identifying and separating conditions which indicate pseudo-freedom, or actual slavery, from those of true freedom.” Citing an outpouring of support for the festivities, the committee resolved to make them an annual tradition and, more important, keep the spirit of its central message alive in American life. The entire nation, its members hoped, would soon think of itself as “under God.”
And indeed, it did. The Christian libertarianism that propelled this religious rhetoric into American politics proved short-lived, but its slogans thrived long after it was gone. Ironically, language designed to discredit the federal government was soon used to sanctify it instead.
Throughout the 1950s, a new trend of what the Senate chaplain called “under-God consciousness” transformed American political life. In 1953, the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast was convened on the theme of “Government Under God.” In 1954, the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the phrase “under God” for the first time, too. A similar slogan, “In God We Trust,” spread just as quickly. Congress added it to stamps in 1954 and then to paper money in 1955; in 1956, the phrase became the nation’s first official motto.
As this religious revival swept through American politics, many in the United States began to believe their government was formally and fundamentally religious. In many ways, they’ve believed it ever since.
Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton and the author, most recently, of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015).
How one reverend’s big business-backed crusade altered the political landscape.
By Kevin Kruse / Basic Books
The following is an adapted excerpt from Kevin Kruse's new book,
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015).
In December 1940, as America was emerging from the Great Depression, more than 5,000 industrialists from across the nation made their yearly pilgrimage to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, convening for the annual meeting of the National Association of Manufacturers. The program promised an impressive slate of speakers: titans at General Motors, General Electric, Standard Oil, Mutual Life, and Sears, Roebuck; popular lecturers such as etiquette expert Emily Post and renowned philosopher-historian Will Durant; even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Tucked away near the end of the program was a name few knew initially, but one everyone would be talking about by the convention’s end: Reverend James W. Fifield Jr.
Handsome, tall, and somewhat gangly, the 41-year-old Congregationalist minister bore more than a passing resemblance to Jimmy Stewart. Addressing the crowd of business leaders, Fifield delivered a passionate defense of the American system of free enterprise and a withering assault on its perceived enemies in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. Decrying the New Deal’s “encroachment upon our American freedoms,” the minister listed a litany of sins committed by the Democratic government, ranging from its devaluation of currency to its disrespect for the Supreme Court. Singling out the regulatory state for condemnation, he denounced “the multitude of federal agencies attached to the executive branch” and warned ominously of “the menace of autocracy approaching through bureaucracy.”
It all sounds familiar enough today, but Fifield’s audience of executives was stunned. Over the preceding decade, as America first descended into and then crawled its way out of the Great Depression, the these titans of industry had been told, time and time again, that they were to blame for the nation’s downfall. Fifield, in contrast, insisted that they were the source of its salvation.
They just needed to do one thing: Get religion.
Fifield told the industrialists that clergymen would be crucial in regaining the upper hand in their war with Roosevelt. As men of God, ministers could voice the same conservative complaints as business leaders, but without any suspicion that they were motivated solely by self-interest. They could push back against claims, made often by Roosevelt and his allies, that business had somehow sinned and the welfare state was doing God’s work. The assembled industrialists gave a rousing amen. “When he had finished,” a journalist noted, “rumors report that the N.A.M. applause could be heard in Hoboken.”
It was a watershed moment—the beginning of a movement that would advance over the 1940s and early 1950s a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Fifield and like-minded ministers saw Christianity and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, and argued that spreading the gospel of one required spreading the gospel of the other. The two systems had been linked before, of course, but always in terms of their shared social characteristics. Fifield’s innovation was his insistence that Christianity and capitalism were political soul mates, first and foremost.
Before the New Deal, the government had never loomed quite so large over business and, as a result, it had never loomed large in Americans’ thinking about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. But in Fifield’s vision, it now cast a long and ominous shadow.He and his colleagues devoted themselves to fighting the government forces they believed were threatening capitalism and, by extension, Christianity. And their activities helped build a foundation for a new vision of America in which businessmen would no longer suffer under the rule of Roosevelt but instead thrive—in a phrase they popularized—in a nation “under God.” In many ways, the marriage of corporate and Christian interests that has recently dominated the news—from the Hobby Lobby case to controversies over state-level versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act—is not that new at all.
***
For much of the 1930s, organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) had been searching in vain for ways to rehabilitate a public image that had been destroyed in the Great Depression and defamed by the New Deal. In 1934, a new generation of conservative industrialists took over NAM with a promise to “serve the purposes of business salvation.” The organization rededicated itself to spreading the gospel of free enterprise, vastly expanding its expenditures in the field. As late as 1934, NAM spent a paltry $36,000 on public relations. Three years later, it devoted $793,043 to the cause, more than half its total income. NAM now promoted capitalism through a wide array of films, radio programs, advertisements, direct mail, a speakers bureau and a press service that provided ready-made editorials and news stories for 7,500 local newspapers.
Ultimately, though, industry’s self-promotion was seen as precisely that. Jim Farley, chairman of the Democratic Party, joked that another group involved in this public relations campaign—the American Liberty League—really should have been called the “American Cellophane League.” “First, it’s a DuPont product,” Farley quipped, “And second, you can see right through it.” Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt took his shots. “It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” he noted soon after the Liberty League’s creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.” Off the record, he joked that the name of the god they worshiped seemed to be “Property.”
As Roosevelt’s quips made clear, the president shrewdly used spiritual language for political ends. In the judgment of his biographer James MacGregor Burns, “probably no American politician has given so many speeches that were essentially sermons rather than statements of policy.” His first inaugural address was so laden with references to Scripture that the National Bible Press published an extensive chart linking his text with the “Corresponding Biblical Quotations.” In a memorable passage, Roosevelt reassured the nation that “the money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore the temple to the ancient truths.”
When Roosevelt launched the New Deal, politically liberal clergymen echoed his arguments, championing his proposal for a vast welfare state as simply the Christian thing to do. The head of the Federal Council of Churches, for instance, claimed the New Deal embodied basic Christian principles such as the “significance of daily bread, shelter, and security.” When businessmen realized their economic arguments were no match for Roosevelt’s religious ones, they decided to beat him at his own game.
That’s where Revered Fifield came in. Nicknamed “The Apostle to Millionaires” by a friendly writer, Fifield took over the elite First Congregational Church in Los Angeles in 1935. The minister was well matched to the millionaires in his pews. Politically conservative but doctrinally liberal, he crafted an interpretation of the Bible that catered to his congregation. Notably, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty, and instead assured the elite that their worldly success was a sign of God’s blessings.
Soon after his arrival in Los Angeles, Fifield founded Spiritual Mobilization, an organization whose mission was “to arouse the ministers of all denominations in America to check the trends toward pagan stateism, which would destroy our basic freedom and spiritual ideals.” The organization’s credo reflected the common politics of the millionaires in his congregation: Men were creatures of God imbued with “inalienable rights and responsibilities,” specifically enumerated as “the liberty and dignity of the individual, in which freedom of choice, of enterprise and of property is inherent.” Churches, it asserted, had a solemn duty to defend those rights against the encroachments of the state.
Fifield quickly brought the organization into national politics, gaining attention from leading conservatives across America who were eager to enlist ministers in their fight against the New Deal. Former President Herbert Hoover, deposed by Roosevelt and disparaged by his acolytes, advisedand encouraged Fifield in personal meetings and regular correspondence. “If it would be possible for the Church to make a non-biased investigation into the morals of this government,” Hoover wrote the minister in 1938, “they would find everywhere the old negation of Christianity that ‘the end justifies the means.’” In October 1938, Fifield sent an alarmist tract to more than 70,000 clergymen across the nation, seeking to recruit them in the revolt against Roosevelt. “We ministers have special opportunities and special responsibilities in these critical days,” it began. “America’s movement toward dictatorship has already eliminated checks and balances in its concentration of powers in our chief executive.” Finding the leaflet to his liking, Hoover sent Fifield a warm note of appreciation and urged him to press on.
Within a few years, the minister had the support of not just Hoover but an impressive array of conservative figures in politics, business and religion—“a who’s who of the conservative establishment,” in the words of one observer. As Spiritual Mobilization’s national ambitions grew, Fifield searched for more sponsors to finance the fight. In the mid-1940s, he won a number of powerful new patrons, but none was more important than J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil.
Tall and stiff, with bushy eyebrows, Pew had a stern appearance that matched his attitude. He had previously been involved in anti-New Deal organizations like the Liberty League and now believed the postwar era would witness a renewed struggle for the soul of the nation. Looking over some material from Spiritual Mobilization, Pew decided the organization shared his understanding of what was wrong with America and what needed to be done. But to his dismay, the material offered no agenda for action whatsoever, merely noting that Spiritual Mobilization would send clergymen bulletins and place advertisements but ultimately “leave details” of what to do “to individual ministers.” Pew thought this was no way to run a national operation. “I am frank to confess,” he wrote a confidant, “that if Dr. Fifield has developed a concrete program and knows exactly where he is going and what he expects to accomplish, that conception has never become clearly defined in my mind.”
If Pew felt Fifield’s touch had been too light, he knew a more forceful approach would fail as well. In February 1945, famed industrial consultant Alfred Haake explained to Pew why NAM’s own outreach to ministers had failed. “Of the approximately thirty preachers to whom I have thus far talked, I have yet to find one who is unqualifiedly impressed,” Haake reported. “One of the men put it almost typically for the rest when he said: ‘The careful preparation and framework for the meetings to which we are brought is too apparent. We cannot help but see that it is expertly designed propaganda and that there must be big money behind it. We easily become suspicious.’”
If they wanted to convince clergymen to side with them, industrialists would need a subtler approach. Rather than treating ministers as a passive audience to be persuaded, Haake argued, they should involve them actively in the cause as participants. The first step would be making ministers realize that they, too, had something to fear from the growth of government. “The religious leaders must be helped to discover that their callings are threatened,” Haake argued, by realizing that the “collectivism” of the New Deal, “with the glorification of the state, is really a denial of God.” Once they were thus alarmed, they would readily join Spiritual Mobilization as its representatives and could then be organized more effectively into a force for change both locally and nationally.
***
Reverend Fifield worked to make Spiritual Mobilization out of the ranks of the clergy. The growing numbers of its “minister-representatives” were found in every state, with large concentrations in industrial regions like New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. They were overwhelmingly Protestant, though a scattering of priests and rabbis allowed the organization to present itself as part of the new spirit of “Judeo-Christianity.” In the previous decade, this innovative “interfaith” approach had taken shape as a way for liberal clergymen to unite in common social causes. Now, in the postwar era, conservative organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization shrewdly followed suit.
The organization grew rapidly. In February 1947, Fifield reported that in three years he had expanded the mass of their minister-representatives from an initial 400 members to more than 10,000 in all. He set them to work spreading arguments against the “pagan stateism” of the New Deal. “It is time to exalt the dignity of individual man as a child of God,” he urged. “Let’s redouble our efforts.”
Clergymen responded enthusiastically. Many wrote the Los Angeles office to request advertised copies of Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian treatise The Road to Serfdom and anti–New Deal tracts by Herbert Hoover and libertarian author Garet Garrett. Armed with such materials, the minister-representatives transformed secular arguments into spiritual ones and spread them widely. “Occasionally I preach a sermon directly on your theme,” a Midwestern minister wrote, “but equally important, it is in the background of my thought as I prepare all my sermons, meet various groups and individuals.” Everyday activities were echoed by special events. In October 1947, for instance, Spiritual Mobilization held a national sermon competition on the theme “The Perils to Freedom,” with $5,000 offered in prize money. The organization had more than 12,000 minister representatives at that point, but it received twice as many submissions for the competition—representing roughly 15 percent of the entire country’s clergymen.
Pleased with his progress, Fifield’s backers doubled the annual budget. Pew once again set the pace, soliciting donations from officials at 158 corporations, including longstanding supporters of Spiritual Mobilizationsuch as General Motors, Chrysler, National Steel, Firestone Tire and Rubber and Gulf Oil. “A large percentage of ministers in this country are completely ignorant of economic matters and have used their pulpits for the purpose of disseminating socialistic and totalitarian doctrines,” Pew wrote in his appeal. “Much has already been accomplished in the education of these ministers, but a great deal more is left to be done.”
The success of Spiritual Mobilization brought increased funding, but also scorn from progressives. In February 1948, the Nation ranan acidic cover story. “A major battle for the minds of the clergy, particularly those of the Protestant persuasion, is now being waged in America,” it read. “For the most part the battle lines are honestly drawn and represent a sharp clash in ideologies, but now and then the reactionary side tries to fudge a bit by backing movements which mask their true character and real sponsors. Such a movement is Spiritual Mobilization.” The article detailed the scope of its operations, noting its high-rent offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as the hundreds of thousands of pamphlets by pro-business authors it distributed for free. But no one knew who was funding the operation, the Nation warned. In this withering account, Fifield came off as a charlatan who prostrated himself before the “apostles of rugged individualism” to secure his own fame and fortune and, in return, prostituted himself for their needs.
In response, Spiritual Mobilization redoubled its efforts, taking an even more aggressive approach to public relations. In 1949, it launched The Freedom Story, a 15-minute radio program consisting of a dramatic presentation and brief commentary from Fifield. In the original scripts, Fifield made direct attacks on Democratic programs at home, but his lawyer warned him they would lose the “public service” designation that gave them free airtime if he were “too plain spoken” with partisan attacks. Instead, he advised, the minister should make use of foreign examples to illustrate the spreading menace of “creeping socialism” at home. Fifield’s financial backers helped secure free airtime for these programs across the nation. In 1950, The Freedom Story was broadcast on over 500 stations; by late 1951, it aired on more than 800.
Meanwhile, Spiritual Mobilization launched a monthly magazine, Faith and Freedom, showcasing the work of prominent libertarian authors, including Ludwig von Mises, leader of the Austrian School of economics; Leonard Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education; and Henry Hazlitt, a founding member of the future American Enterprise Institute. Even though laymen dominated the pages of Faith and Freedom, the journal purposely presented itself as created by ministers for ministers. Spiritual Mobilization had long operated on the principle that clergymen could not be swayed through crude propaganda. “The articulation should be worked out beforehand, of course, and we should be ready to help the thinking of the ministers on it,” Haake noted in one of his early musings, “but it should be so done as to enable them to discover it for themselves.”
Faith and Freedom thus presented itself as a forum in which ministers could disagree freely. But for all of its claims about encouraging debate, the journaldid little to hide its contempt for liberal ministers. The magazine repeatedly denounced the Social Gospel and, just as important, clergymen who invoked it to advocate for the establishment and expansion of welfare state programs. In a typical article, Irving Howard, a Congregationalist minister, darkly noted the “pagan origin of the Social Gospel” in 19th century Unitarianism and Transcendentalism, claiming it was part of a larger “impetus to a shift in faith from God to man, from eternity to time, from the individual to the group, [from] individual conversion to social coercion, and from the church to the state.”
With the Republican gains in the midterm elections of 1950, the forces behind Spiritual Mobilization felt emboldened. In an upbeat letter to Alfred Sloan, the head of General Motors and one of his ardent supporters, Fifield reflected on the recent returns. “We are having quite a deluge of letters from across the country, indicating the feeling that Spiritual Mobilization has had some part in the awakening which was evidenced by the elections,” he wrote. “Of course, we are a little proud and very happy for whatever good we have been able to do in waking people up to the peril of collectivism and the importance of Freedom under God.”
For Fifield and his associates, the phrase “freedom under God”—contrasted with what they saw as oppression under the federal government—became an effective new rallying cry in the early 1950s. The minister pressed the theme repeatedly in the pages of Faith and Freedom and in his radio broadcasts of The Freedom Story, but he soon found a more prominent means of spreading the message to the American people.
***
In the spring of 1951, Spiritual Mobilization’s leaders struck upon an idea they believed would advance their cause considerably. To mark the 175th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, they proposed for the week surrounding the Fourth of July a massive series of events devoted to the theme of “Freedom Under God.”
To that end, in June 1951, the leaders of Spiritual Mobilization announced the formation of a new Committee to Proclaim Liberty to coordinate their Fourth of July “Freedom Under God” celebrations. Despite its apparent spiritual emphasis, the true goal of the Committee was advancing political conservatism. Its two most prominent members had been brought low by Democratic administrations: Hoover, driven from the White House two decades earlier by Franklin Roosevelt, and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, removed from his command in Korea two months earlier by Harry Truman. These conservative icons were joined by military leaders, heads of patriotic groups, conservative legal and political stars, right-wing media figures and outspoken conservatives from the realm of entertainment, such as Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan. But the majority came from corporate America. J. Howard Pew was joined by other business giants, including household names such as Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, James L. Kraft, Henry Luce, Fred Maytag and J.C. Penney, as well as lesser-known leaders at giant corporations including General Motors, Chrysler, U.S. Steel and Gulf Oil.
The committee’s corporate sponsors took out full-page newspaper ads to promote a pinched version of the Declaration. Dropping the founding fathers’ long list of grievances about the absence of effective government in the colonies, the sponsors reprinted just the preamble alone. This approach allowed them to reframe the Declaration as a purely libertarian manifesto, dedicated solely to the removal of an oppressive government.
The San Diego Gas & Electric Company, for instance, encouraged its customers to reread the preamble, which it presented with its editorial commentary running alongside:
These words are the stones upon which man has built history’s greatest work—the United States of America. Remember them well!
“ … all men are created equal … ” That means you are as important in the eyes of God as any man brought into this world. You are made in his image and likeness. There is no “superior” man anywhere.
“ … they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … ” Here is your birthright—the freedom to live, work, worship, and vote as you choose. These are rights no government on earth may take from you.
“ … That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men … ” Here is the reason for and the purpose of government. Government is but a servant—not a master—not a giver of anything.
“ … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed … ” In America, the government may assume only the powers you allow it to have. It may assume no others.
The Committee to Proclaim Liberty also enlisted the nation’s ministers to promote the “Freedom Under God” festivities. Those on Spiritual Mobilization’s mailing list received a prefabricated press release that merely needed clergymen to fill in the blanks with their personal information (“‘The purpose of the Committee,’ the Reverend _________ declared, ‘is to revive a custom long forgotten in America—spiritual emphasis on the 4th of July’”). The committee also established a sermon contest, modeled on the wildly successful “Perils to Freedom” competition of 1947. The 17,000 minister-representatives of the organization were encouraged to compete for cash prizes and other rewards by writing an original sermon on the theme of “Freedom Under God” and delivering it to their congregations on “Independence Sunday,” July 1, 1951.
These sermons were amplified by a program broadcast that same evening over CBS’s national radio network. Cecil B. DeMille worked with his old friend Fifield to plan the production, giving it a professional tone and attracting an impressive array of Hollywood stars. Jimmy Stewart served as master of ceremonies, while Bing Crosby and Gloria Swanson offered short messages of their own. The preamble to the Declaration was read by Lionel Barrymore, who had posed for promotional photos holding a giant quill and looking at a large piece of parchment inscribed with the words “Freedom Under God Will Save Our Country.”
The broadcast featured choral performances of “America” as well as “Heritage,” an epic poem composed by a former leader of the US Chamber of Commerce. Gen. Matthew Ridgway interrupted his duties leading American forces in Korea to send a keynote address from Tokyo. He insisted that the founding fathers had been motivated, in large part, by their religious faith. “For them there was no confusion of thought, no uncertainty of objectives, no doubt as to the road they should follow to their goals,” he said. “Theirs was a deep and abiding faith in God, a faith which is still the great reservoir of strength of the American people in this day of great responsibility for their future and the future of the world.”
The “Freedom Under God” festivities reached a crescendo with local celebrations on the Fourth of July. The Committee to Proclaim Liberty coordinated the ringing of church bells across the nation, timed to start precisely at noon and last for a full 10 minutes. Cities and small towns across the country scheduled their own events around the bell ringing. In Los Angeles, for instance, the city’s civil defense agency sounded its air raid sirens in the first test since their installation, resulting in what one newspaper described as “a scream as wild and proud as that of the American eagle.” As bells chimed across the city, residents were encouraged by the committee “to open their doors, sound horns and blow whistles and ring bells, as individual salutes to Freedom.” After the bell ringing, groups gathered in churches and homes to read the preamble together. Both Mayor Fletcher Bowron and Gov. Earl Warren, like their counterparts in many other cities and states, issued official proclamations that urged citizens, in Warren’s words, to spend the day reflecting upon “the blessings we enjoy through Freedom under God.”
That night, 50,000 residents attended a massive rally at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Organized under the theme “Freedom Under God Needs You,” the night featured eight circus acts, a jet plane demonstration and a fireworks display that the local chapter of the American Legion promised would be the largest in the entire country. Fifield had the honor of offering the invocation for the evening ceremonies, while actor Gregory Peck delivered a dramatic reading of the Declaration’s preamble.
In the end, the Committee to Proclaim Liberty believed, rightly, that its work had made a lasting impression on the nation. “The very words ‘Freedom Under God’ [have] added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term,” the organizers concluded. “It is a significant phrase to people who know that everybody from Stalin on down is paying lip service to freedom until its root meaning is no longer apparent. The term ‘Freedom Under God’ provides a means of identifying and separating conditions which indicate pseudo-freedom, or actual slavery, from those of true freedom.” Citing an outpouring of support for the festivities, the committee resolved to make them an annual tradition and, more important, keep the spirit of its central message alive in American life. The entire nation, its members hoped, would soon think of itself as “under God.”
And indeed, it did. The Christian libertarianism that propelled this religious rhetoric into American politics proved short-lived, but its slogans thrived long after it was gone. Ironically, language designed to discredit the federal government was soon used to sanctify it instead.
Throughout the 1950s, a new trend of what the Senate chaplain called “under-God consciousness” transformed American political life. In 1953, the first-ever National Prayer Breakfast was convened on the theme of “Government Under God.” In 1954, the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended to include the phrase “under God” for the first time, too. A similar slogan, “In God We Trust,” spread just as quickly. Congress added it to stamps in 1954 and then to paper money in 1955; in 1956, the phrase became the nation’s first official motto.
As this religious revival swept through American politics, many in the United States began to believe their government was formally and fundamentally religious. In many ways, they’ve believed it ever since.
Kevin M. Kruse is a professor of history at Princeton and the author, most recently, of One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015).
Space at the Table: Sacred Meals
Preamble
We concluded Holy Week with our Easter celebration last Sunday. We camped out in John 20 where the Gospel writer wanted to impress upon us the importance of the resurrection by triggering our memory of a similar story.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. (John 20:1 TNIV)
It was the first day of the week, and it was dark. Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s the beginning of the creation narrative, where we find the earth unproductive, empty and dark.
...the earth was unproductive, empty and dark... and the Spirit of God was hovering of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)
John, the Gospel writer retold the resurrection narrative to match it to the creation narrative. He wanted us to see and understand something: “God’s at work in his creation; though it appears that all hope is lost, it’s not.” Though it seems that there is no reason to hope, John invites us to keep hope alive.
Just as Adam stood as the first human of the old world, Jesus now stands at the gate of the new world, the first of the new creation. “Jesus isn’t dead,” John declares, God has raised him from the dead. And the resurrection launches a witnessing community gathered together in Jesus’s name, creating a new world order, ushering “the age to come” into “this present age.” It starts as this witnessing community comes together, tearing down the barriers that separated us from ourselves, each other, and God coming down.
Introduction
On Easter Sunday we had a party here at church, and our celebration started with a pancake breakfast, It’s the theme of meals that I want to use to launch a new sermon series called, “Space at the Table.”
A table was the first piece of furniture that I purchased when I arrived here in Ann Arbor in 1997. I still have it. And I remember the first dinner party I had with it. I invited over a dozen or so folks and packed the table with all of the foods that I loved. I made every recipe that my mom had taught me, and it all turned out great, except for the monkey bread which overflowed and burned in the oven filling the house with smoke. I remember airing out the house as my guests arrived.
It was at that same table that I had my first date with my wife, Maria. After church we had brunch at Café Marie’s. Not ready to end our time together, and since I lived nearby, we headed over to my place to enjoy some fresh baked cookies I had made the day before.
For most of us, the dinner table serves as the center of the gathering space in our homes or family gatherings. We eat our meals at it, we pay our bills at it, we have our conversations at it, we receive good news and bad news at it.
It’s a major fixture in our living spaces. And each table is unique, many are heirlooms–passed down generation to generation. Some are new, larger than the previous ones, so we can get more people around one table. Some are temporary. Some are handcrafted with love and care, others assembled using difficult tools and sweat pouring down. And some just small enough to hold a dinner plate and a drink.
Whatever the size or history, when space is made for us at the table, it’s transformative. We are welcome, cared for, loved, no longer alone. Being welcomed at the table is like when someone knows your name, your struggle, your pain, and is willing to pray for you, care for you, love you, make space for you. See, if we can enter into this welcome, we can see that this space at the table is like what God does for us, he sets us apart, he calls us his own, making us holy. It’s not about us, it’s about him, it’s about what he does for us. So, when we make space at the table, we consecrate it, we set it apart, we act with intention, we lean in.
Sacred Meals - meals of freedom, liberations, betrayals, and reconciliations
The meals we share at these tables are just as important. Often we just see the routine of sitting and eating, but something significant happens when we discover that what we are doing is sacred. Whether we eat together as a family every night or whether we wolf down our take-out order before heading to bed, our eating can be a time of great importance and significance. A sacred space. A time to commune, a time to fellowship, a time for reflection, a time for gratitude, a time to celebrate, a time to mourn. Meals have a unique way of creating space in our lives and are sacred events.
And as we approach the table, to find if there is space for us there, we start with a story. In the book of beginnings, we discover things about ourselves and God. We discover the sacredness of meals. We learn that God is sacred, holy, good. We discover that his intent is to make us, his creation, and everything he touches sacred, holy, and good. We don’t have to read very far to see that our need for food is sacred as is our need for companionship with each other. And these sacred meals, they represent the full dynamic tension of our lives, full of ups and downs, joy and sadness, betrayals and reconciliations.
At the beginning we meet Abram, a nomadic warlord, who, after he liberates his nephew Lot, is greeted by the King of Salem, Melchizedek. Let’s pick up the story in Genesis 14:18:
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Right here, we are alerted that something special is happening. This is a sacred meal, celebrating victory, liberation, and freedom.
In this story, we have this mysterious King of Salem, which happens to be the ancient name for the city of Jerusalem, who just appears, blesses Abram, and brings out some key elements: bread and wine. Pay attention because we will see these keys elements show up again, with new meaning and importance. In response to all of this, Abram give a 10th of all he has to this King of Salem. This is the first mention of tithing, and it’s an act of gratitude and worship!
Later in the story, we learn that Jesus, after his resurrection, becomes a high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
The next sacred meal is with three strangers and Abram, who now goes by Abraham. In the Melchizedek story, he’s a priest without a father or mother. In this story, it’s three strangers, there’s someone else we know who is represented by three persons. These messengers promise a son after they share a meal. This son will have a significant role in the liberation of creation from the bondage of sin, death, and evil.
In Genesis 24, we meet with Abraham again, and this time he’s in search of a bride for the promised son, Isaac. He sends his servant out, who discovers Rebekah, and hopes she’s the one. She seems to be, but she must come back with him freely, which means the servant has to receive her father’s blessing. This is negotiated over a meal.
From Liberation to Betrayal to Reconciliation
The next several meals introduce the dramatic tension and betrayal.
Jacob (son of Isaac and Rebekah) trades his brother Esau a meal in exchange for his brother’s birth-right.
Continuing down the family tree, we find another meal of betrayal. Another set of brothers. This time it’s Joseph and his brothers who are all Jacob’s sons. They don’t like him. They plot to kill him, instead, a brother lobbies successfully to sell him into slavery. They do their plotting with Joseph rotting in a cistern, while they share a meal.
Fast forward to the final meal recorded in Genesis, a meal of reconciliation. Joseph, the former slave, is now the master in Egypt. His brothers, who sold him, are before him begging for bread. They don’t know that the master in Egypt is their brother Joseph, and the story ends with a dramatic feast after which Joseph reveals just who he is to them.
In the first first meal in the New Testament, we discover Jesus having dinner with a sinner and traitor.
Matthew, a tax collector, had betrayed his Nation, turned his back on his people and was in league with the Empire. Not only does Jesus have dinner with Matthew, Jesus eventually calls Matthew to become his disciple.
Israel was occupied, held in bondage by foreigners. This could happen because their exile wasn’t over, even though they had returned to the promised land. Why hadn’t the exile ended? This was the central question of the nation, how do we end the exile? The keepers of the traditions of old had the solution — let’s use the good Torah that the Creator gave us to whip the people back into shape. We will monitor their activity, actions, behavior, and we will point out the problems. Hopefully as they change their behavior, the King will see from heaven and hasten his return.
So when the Pharisees ask Jesus’ disciples why he’s eating with tax collectors and sinners, they were asking why was Jesus “getting into bed” with these sinners. Doesn’t he care about the exile? Doesn’t he want our occupation to come to an end? Doesn’t he want the King to return? See, the King won’t return if we aren’t ready, if we haven’t cleaned up our act, if we aren’t holy, righteous, worthy – surely a teacher from God would know this and understand it.
Jesus resists the religious rulers in the same way he resists the Empire, by subverting it and revealing the truth about God. Jesus reveals exactly who God is to us: God is sacred, holy, and good. God isn’t corrupted by us, he isn’t stained by our brokenness, our sin. Instead, God heals us, he restores us, he renews us. This is the God who rescues us.
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12)
The next time we see Jesus reclining at a table, it’s in the home of Simon the Pharisee. At some point during the meal, an uninvited woman pushes her way in to get to Jesus. She’s there to get forgiveness. Again, the same alarms go off, “Don’t you know who is touching you?” Again Jesus resists the religious rulers and the Empire by telling them something important about God – God isn’t corrupted by us, he isn’t stained by our brokenness. No, God restores us, he heals us, he renews us, and he forgives us.
This is the theme that brings us to the Passover meal, the annual retelling of the exodus, the liberation of the people of God from bondage, captivity, slavery.
And following in the same pattern of the other meals, there’s all of the familiar dramatic tension of betrayal and redemption at this meal. Jesus shares this last meal with his friends, and among them is one who will betray him with a kiss, turning him over to the chief priests possibly in the hope of forcing Jesus into action–the action of liberation, bringing an end to their exile.
Jesus eagerly desired to eat this Passover with his friends. He’s aware of his vocation, understanding now just how God plans to reconcile the world back to himself. This sacred meal, this freedom meal, this liberation meal, what we have come to know as the Last Supper, is the ultimate meal of redemption.
You and I are welcomed at this table. This is the table of redemption. But we can’t approach it if we don’t believe we need forgiveness, healing, restoration, mercy, grace. That’s what’s available at this table–the table of redemption–if you don’t need these things, then you won’t come to it. But you are welcome.
Eat this Bread, Drink this Cup
This is the meal where all the drama of the story, the long and winding love story of God and humanity, expressed on this good earth, under his good rule reaches its climax. Just as God acted in times of old and rescued his people, he’s doing it again. He’s come personally this time to rescue the creation from the powers: sin, death, and evil.
This is the enactment of the dramatic story with struggle, suffering, betrayal, and faithful wrestling with each other for our soul–this is where it comes in concentrated form: his body broken for us, his blood poured out for us... this is the real presence of God, in Jesus, here with us, really here, found at this table, the table of redemption.
Here’s our invitation today, come to this table, eat this bread, drink this cup. When we come to the table and partake, we join in the new world order that Jesus establishes in his resurrection, we join a new family. When we come to the table, we identify with him, we accept and receive his act of obedience, his profound act of selfless love, which becomes our pathway to freedom.
When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we acknowledge that we need to, we acknowledge that we are held in bondage, and this is our pathway to freedom. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we surrender ourselves to this King of Glory, we consent to his Lordship. When we eat this bread, and drink this cup, we receive his love poured out for us. This is no mere ritual or rite without meaning. No, it’s full of meaning, purpose, significance. This is a sacred meal, and we are welcomed, not because we are worthy, holy, to righteous, but because he made a way for us. He makes us holy, worthy, and righteous.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. (John 15:13)
He calls us friends, no longer are we the enemies of God. We have been welcomed, space has been made for us. [Some of us have to accept that we are welcomed at the table, that we are no longer excluded, in exile. This requires us to open our hands and receive the cup of redemption. Some of us aren’t ready and that’s okay. There’s space for all of us this morning.
We are going to celebrate this meal together this morning.
Eat this Bread
Come to the table, the table of redemption, and receive his body broken, his blood poured out. As we eat this bread, we declare our victory, the change in our status, we celebrate that his love defeated the powers: sin, death, and evil. As we drink this cup, we proclaim the redemption that was won for us, we welcome the age to come that is breaking into this present age.
Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them.
This bread represents so much to all of us. It’s also our offering, the fruit of our labor, the tokens of our life and work. It’s our act of surrender, our offering before a God who sees us and loves us.
We bless this bread because Jesus did.
Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, the One who bring forth bread from heaven.
We bless this bread, and we pray that it becomes the enactment of the great drama of the sacred meals of liberation, freedom, and betrayal (ours and others), and it would lead us as we consume it to reconciliation with ourselves, each other, and God.
May this bread become the vessel and vehicle of God’s Jesus-shaped love for each of us who would dare receive it.
As we receive this bread, a symbol of God’s good creation longing for its own redemption, may it release in us the saving purposes of God, with past and future rushing together into this present moment.
As we break this bread, we link this bread to all the sacred meals of liberation, freedom, rebellion, betrayal, reconciliation, and redemption. Take this bread. Receive the redemption of the King of Glory come to us.
Break the bread – Take and eat.
Drink this Cup
When the time came to drink the third cup of wine of the Passover meal, the cup of redemption, Jesus lifted the cup as the disciples would have expected and said,
“Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe for giving us the fruit of the vine.”
They never expected him to say what he said next, “This is a new covenant in my blood, which I offer to you.” They were steeped in a culture of sacrifice, they were commanded to offer a libation to the Emperor with every meal, but these words were different — they were signaling something. Maybe initially it reminded them of what a young Jewish man would say to a potential wife. When he said it he meant, “I want to offer you my life and take you as my bride.”
Just like that young woman receiving a marriage offer, all of us have a decision to make today, will we accept the offer from Jesus? By drinking this cup, the cup of redemption, we acknowledge and accept the sacrifice that is being offered, a life poured out for us.
We fulfill what Hosea, the prophet said, “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.” (Hosea 2:19-20)
As we accept the cup and drink, we declare, “I accept your offer Jesus, and I give you my life in return.”
Raise the Cup
Drink this cup and eat.
We do this every week to remind us of our need for redemption, forgiveness, mercy, grace, space, healing. We are enacting this sacred meal over and over again because we need to until we reach its fulfillment in the most important meal in all of scripture, the wedding feast of the lamb. Where we will finally be free, every tear wiped away, all of our pain and suffering banished, every nation, every tribe, every tongue, reconciled, restored, healed. That’s what we celebrate when we find space at this table — it’s the hope of the restoration of all things. Finally the King, home once again, among his good creation.
Preamble
We concluded Holy Week with our Easter celebration last Sunday. We camped out in John 20 where the Gospel writer wanted to impress upon us the importance of the resurrection by triggering our memory of a similar story.
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. (John 20:1 TNIV)
It was the first day of the week, and it was dark. Does that sound familiar? It should. It’s the beginning of the creation narrative, where we find the earth unproductive, empty and dark.
...the earth was unproductive, empty and dark... and the Spirit of God was hovering of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)
John, the Gospel writer retold the resurrection narrative to match it to the creation narrative. He wanted us to see and understand something: “God’s at work in his creation; though it appears that all hope is lost, it’s not.” Though it seems that there is no reason to hope, John invites us to keep hope alive.
Just as Adam stood as the first human of the old world, Jesus now stands at the gate of the new world, the first of the new creation. “Jesus isn’t dead,” John declares, God has raised him from the dead. And the resurrection launches a witnessing community gathered together in Jesus’s name, creating a new world order, ushering “the age to come” into “this present age.” It starts as this witnessing community comes together, tearing down the barriers that separated us from ourselves, each other, and God coming down.
Introduction
On Easter Sunday we had a party here at church, and our celebration started with a pancake breakfast, It’s the theme of meals that I want to use to launch a new sermon series called, “Space at the Table.”
A table was the first piece of furniture that I purchased when I arrived here in Ann Arbor in 1997. I still have it. And I remember the first dinner party I had with it. I invited over a dozen or so folks and packed the table with all of the foods that I loved. I made every recipe that my mom had taught me, and it all turned out great, except for the monkey bread which overflowed and burned in the oven filling the house with smoke. I remember airing out the house as my guests arrived.
It was at that same table that I had my first date with my wife, Maria. After church we had brunch at Café Marie’s. Not ready to end our time together, and since I lived nearby, we headed over to my place to enjoy some fresh baked cookies I had made the day before.
For most of us, the dinner table serves as the center of the gathering space in our homes or family gatherings. We eat our meals at it, we pay our bills at it, we have our conversations at it, we receive good news and bad news at it.
It’s a major fixture in our living spaces. And each table is unique, many are heirlooms–passed down generation to generation. Some are new, larger than the previous ones, so we can get more people around one table. Some are temporary. Some are handcrafted with love and care, others assembled using difficult tools and sweat pouring down. And some just small enough to hold a dinner plate and a drink.
Whatever the size or history, when space is made for us at the table, it’s transformative. We are welcome, cared for, loved, no longer alone. Being welcomed at the table is like when someone knows your name, your struggle, your pain, and is willing to pray for you, care for you, love you, make space for you. See, if we can enter into this welcome, we can see that this space at the table is like what God does for us, he sets us apart, he calls us his own, making us holy. It’s not about us, it’s about him, it’s about what he does for us. So, when we make space at the table, we consecrate it, we set it apart, we act with intention, we lean in.
Sacred Meals - meals of freedom, liberations, betrayals, and reconciliations
The meals we share at these tables are just as important. Often we just see the routine of sitting and eating, but something significant happens when we discover that what we are doing is sacred. Whether we eat together as a family every night or whether we wolf down our take-out order before heading to bed, our eating can be a time of great importance and significance. A sacred space. A time to commune, a time to fellowship, a time for reflection, a time for gratitude, a time to celebrate, a time to mourn. Meals have a unique way of creating space in our lives and are sacred events.
And as we approach the table, to find if there is space for us there, we start with a story. In the book of beginnings, we discover things about ourselves and God. We discover the sacredness of meals. We learn that God is sacred, holy, good. We discover that his intent is to make us, his creation, and everything he touches sacred, holy, and good. We don’t have to read very far to see that our need for food is sacred as is our need for companionship with each other. And these sacred meals, they represent the full dynamic tension of our lives, full of ups and downs, joy and sadness, betrayals and reconciliations.
At the beginning we meet Abram, a nomadic warlord, who, after he liberates his nephew Lot, is greeted by the King of Salem, Melchizedek. Let’s pick up the story in Genesis 14:18:
Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blessed Abram, saying, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth. And praise be to God Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.
Right here, we are alerted that something special is happening. This is a sacred meal, celebrating victory, liberation, and freedom.
In this story, we have this mysterious King of Salem, which happens to be the ancient name for the city of Jerusalem, who just appears, blesses Abram, and brings out some key elements: bread and wine. Pay attention because we will see these keys elements show up again, with new meaning and importance. In response to all of this, Abram give a 10th of all he has to this King of Salem. This is the first mention of tithing, and it’s an act of gratitude and worship!
Later in the story, we learn that Jesus, after his resurrection, becomes a high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
The next sacred meal is with three strangers and Abram, who now goes by Abraham. In the Melchizedek story, he’s a priest without a father or mother. In this story, it’s three strangers, there’s someone else we know who is represented by three persons. These messengers promise a son after they share a meal. This son will have a significant role in the liberation of creation from the bondage of sin, death, and evil.
In Genesis 24, we meet with Abraham again, and this time he’s in search of a bride for the promised son, Isaac. He sends his servant out, who discovers Rebekah, and hopes she’s the one. She seems to be, but she must come back with him freely, which means the servant has to receive her father’s blessing. This is negotiated over a meal.
From Liberation to Betrayal to Reconciliation
The next several meals introduce the dramatic tension and betrayal.
Jacob (son of Isaac and Rebekah) trades his brother Esau a meal in exchange for his brother’s birth-right.
Continuing down the family tree, we find another meal of betrayal. Another set of brothers. This time it’s Joseph and his brothers who are all Jacob’s sons. They don’t like him. They plot to kill him, instead, a brother lobbies successfully to sell him into slavery. They do their plotting with Joseph rotting in a cistern, while they share a meal.
Fast forward to the final meal recorded in Genesis, a meal of reconciliation. Joseph, the former slave, is now the master in Egypt. His brothers, who sold him, are before him begging for bread. They don’t know that the master in Egypt is their brother Joseph, and the story ends with a dramatic feast after which Joseph reveals just who he is to them.
In the first first meal in the New Testament, we discover Jesus having dinner with a sinner and traitor.
Matthew, a tax collector, had betrayed his Nation, turned his back on his people and was in league with the Empire. Not only does Jesus have dinner with Matthew, Jesus eventually calls Matthew to become his disciple.
Israel was occupied, held in bondage by foreigners. This could happen because their exile wasn’t over, even though they had returned to the promised land. Why hadn’t the exile ended? This was the central question of the nation, how do we end the exile? The keepers of the traditions of old had the solution — let’s use the good Torah that the Creator gave us to whip the people back into shape. We will monitor their activity, actions, behavior, and we will point out the problems. Hopefully as they change their behavior, the King will see from heaven and hasten his return.
So when the Pharisees ask Jesus’ disciples why he’s eating with tax collectors and sinners, they were asking why was Jesus “getting into bed” with these sinners. Doesn’t he care about the exile? Doesn’t he want our occupation to come to an end? Doesn’t he want the King to return? See, the King won’t return if we aren’t ready, if we haven’t cleaned up our act, if we aren’t holy, righteous, worthy – surely a teacher from God would know this and understand it.
Jesus resists the religious rulers in the same way he resists the Empire, by subverting it and revealing the truth about God. Jesus reveals exactly who God is to us: God is sacred, holy, and good. God isn’t corrupted by us, he isn’t stained by our brokenness, our sin. Instead, God heals us, he restores us, he renews us. This is the God who rescues us.
On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12)
The next time we see Jesus reclining at a table, it’s in the home of Simon the Pharisee. At some point during the meal, an uninvited woman pushes her way in to get to Jesus. She’s there to get forgiveness. Again, the same alarms go off, “Don’t you know who is touching you?” Again Jesus resists the religious rulers and the Empire by telling them something important about God – God isn’t corrupted by us, he isn’t stained by our brokenness. No, God restores us, he heals us, he renews us, and he forgives us.
This is the theme that brings us to the Passover meal, the annual retelling of the exodus, the liberation of the people of God from bondage, captivity, slavery.
And following in the same pattern of the other meals, there’s all of the familiar dramatic tension of betrayal and redemption at this meal. Jesus shares this last meal with his friends, and among them is one who will betray him with a kiss, turning him over to the chief priests possibly in the hope of forcing Jesus into action–the action of liberation, bringing an end to their exile.
Jesus eagerly desired to eat this Passover with his friends. He’s aware of his vocation, understanding now just how God plans to reconcile the world back to himself. This sacred meal, this freedom meal, this liberation meal, what we have come to know as the Last Supper, is the ultimate meal of redemption.
You and I are welcomed at this table. This is the table of redemption. But we can’t approach it if we don’t believe we need forgiveness, healing, restoration, mercy, grace. That’s what’s available at this table–the table of redemption–if you don’t need these things, then you won’t come to it. But you are welcome.
Eat this Bread, Drink this Cup
This is the meal where all the drama of the story, the long and winding love story of God and humanity, expressed on this good earth, under his good rule reaches its climax. Just as God acted in times of old and rescued his people, he’s doing it again. He’s come personally this time to rescue the creation from the powers: sin, death, and evil.
This is the enactment of the dramatic story with struggle, suffering, betrayal, and faithful wrestling with each other for our soul–this is where it comes in concentrated form: his body broken for us, his blood poured out for us... this is the real presence of God, in Jesus, here with us, really here, found at this table, the table of redemption.
Here’s our invitation today, come to this table, eat this bread, drink this cup. When we come to the table and partake, we join in the new world order that Jesus establishes in his resurrection, we join a new family. When we come to the table, we identify with him, we accept and receive his act of obedience, his profound act of selfless love, which becomes our pathway to freedom.
When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we acknowledge that we need to, we acknowledge that we are held in bondage, and this is our pathway to freedom. When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we surrender ourselves to this King of Glory, we consent to his Lordship. When we eat this bread, and drink this cup, we receive his love poured out for us. This is no mere ritual or rite without meaning. No, it’s full of meaning, purpose, significance. This is a sacred meal, and we are welcomed, not because we are worthy, holy, to righteous, but because he made a way for us. He makes us holy, worthy, and righteous.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. (John 15:13)
He calls us friends, no longer are we the enemies of God. We have been welcomed, space has been made for us. [Some of us have to accept that we are welcomed at the table, that we are no longer excluded, in exile. This requires us to open our hands and receive the cup of redemption. Some of us aren’t ready and that’s okay. There’s space for all of us this morning.
We are going to celebrate this meal together this morning.
Eat this Bread
Come to the table, the table of redemption, and receive his body broken, his blood poured out. As we eat this bread, we declare our victory, the change in our status, we celebrate that his love defeated the powers: sin, death, and evil. As we drink this cup, we proclaim the redemption that was won for us, we welcome the age to come that is breaking into this present age.
Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them.
This bread represents so much to all of us. It’s also our offering, the fruit of our labor, the tokens of our life and work. It’s our act of surrender, our offering before a God who sees us and loves us.
We bless this bread because Jesus did.
Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, the One who bring forth bread from heaven.
We bless this bread, and we pray that it becomes the enactment of the great drama of the sacred meals of liberation, freedom, and betrayal (ours and others), and it would lead us as we consume it to reconciliation with ourselves, each other, and God.
May this bread become the vessel and vehicle of God’s Jesus-shaped love for each of us who would dare receive it.
As we receive this bread, a symbol of God’s good creation longing for its own redemption, may it release in us the saving purposes of God, with past and future rushing together into this present moment.
As we break this bread, we link this bread to all the sacred meals of liberation, freedom, rebellion, betrayal, reconciliation, and redemption. Take this bread. Receive the redemption of the King of Glory come to us.
Break the bread – Take and eat.
Drink this Cup
When the time came to drink the third cup of wine of the Passover meal, the cup of redemption, Jesus lifted the cup as the disciples would have expected and said,
“Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe for giving us the fruit of the vine.”
They never expected him to say what he said next, “This is a new covenant in my blood, which I offer to you.” They were steeped in a culture of sacrifice, they were commanded to offer a libation to the Emperor with every meal, but these words were different — they were signaling something. Maybe initially it reminded them of what a young Jewish man would say to a potential wife. When he said it he meant, “I want to offer you my life and take you as my bride.”
Just like that young woman receiving a marriage offer, all of us have a decision to make today, will we accept the offer from Jesus? By drinking this cup, the cup of redemption, we acknowledge and accept the sacrifice that is being offered, a life poured out for us.
We fulfill what Hosea, the prophet said, “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.” (Hosea 2:19-20)
As we accept the cup and drink, we declare, “I accept your offer Jesus, and I give you my life in return.”
Raise the Cup
Drink this cup and eat.
We do this every week to remind us of our need for redemption, forgiveness, mercy, grace, space, healing. We are enacting this sacred meal over and over again because we need to until we reach its fulfillment in the most important meal in all of scripture, the wedding feast of the lamb. Where we will finally be free, every tear wiped away, all of our pain and suffering banished, every nation, every tribe, every tongue, reconciled, restored, healed. That’s what we celebrate when we find space at this table — it’s the hope of the restoration of all things. Finally the King, home once again, among his good creation.
