Published 1885
REVIEW
“IN 'OUR COUNTRY’ published by the American Home Missionary Society,
Rev. Josiah Strong has given us a book whose
value lies in its facts and in the rare ability with which the
author has gathered and verified them. In successive chapters
he has sketched the spirit of the times, the National resources
and Western supremacy. He has depicted the perils from im-
migration, from Romanism, Mormonism, intemperance, social-
ism and wealth; the dangers from urban population and the
exhaustion of the public lands. His final chapter on ' Money
and the Kingdom ' reveals the purpose of the book, which is to
point Christians of this country to the present time as a critical
period in Christ's Kingdom, and to urge upon them the conse-
cration of their wealth to the cause of the Redeemer. The
book ought to be in the hands of every patriot in the land as a
thesaurus of important material facts and as an incentive to
stand on higher grounds of civic and religious duty."
The Advance.
OUR COUNTRY: ITS POSSIBLE FUTURE AND ITS PRESENT CRISIS.
BY REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D. D.,
GENEBAL SECRETARY OF THE EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE
FOR THE UNITED STATES, NEW YORK.
With an Introduction, by
PROF. AUSTIN PHELPS, D. D.
THIS Volume was prepared for the American Home
Missionary Society by REV. JOSIAH STRONG, D.D., then its
representative for the work of Home Missions in Ohio,.
As will be seen at a glance, its main purpose is to lay
before the intelligent Christian people of our country
facts and arguments showing the imperative need of
Home Missionary work for the evangelization of the
land, the encouragements to such effort, and the danger
of neglecting it.
Copies for perusal and distribution can be obtained
from the publishers, The Baker & Taylor Co., No. 9
Bond Street, New York. Fifty cents in cloth binding
or Twenty-five cents in paper.
Copyrighted by the
AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY,
1885.
SIXTY years ago the American Home Missionary Society was
organized to assist congregations that are unable to support the
Gospel ministry and TO SEND THE GOSPEL AND THE MEANS
OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION TO THE DESTITUTE WITHIN THE UNITED
STATES.
It began its work near the commencement of that great
“world-movement" described in this volume. In 1826, when
Western New York was a frontier region, two -thirds of its
missionaries were found in this State.
Now they are laboring in nearly every State and Territory of
the Union. Over 1,000 are in States south and west of New
York. Who can estimate the influence they are exerting in
building up the new communities on Christian foundations?
Some idea of the magnitude and scope of the Society's work
may be gained from the following facts.
In sixty -one year’s its missionaries have organized 4,951
churches and brought 2,430 to self-support. They have gathered
into these churches 345, 973 members. Cash receipts, $11,586,-
692,20,
During the sixty -first year 1,571 missionaries ministered to
3,063 congregations and 129,350 Sunday-school scholars;
organizing 135 new churches and 323 new Sunday-schools
and receiving into the churches 10,031 members.
Cash receipts, $482,979,60.
Never before were the calls for Home Missionary work so
loud. Never were the doors so wide open in all parts of the
land. Never were our institutions in greater peril. Head in
this book of these perils and their remedy. Then let every
patriot and Christian ask if he is not responsible for applying
this remedy. The average cost to this Society for each of its
missionaries is $471 per year.
Are there not many who will each contribute enough to sup-
port at least one such Christian worker ?
SAVE AMERICA TO SAVE THE WORLD !
EXCERPTS
PREFACE
It is worthy of note that almost all the thinking which
think-
ing men have given to the subject for the last fifty years
has
been in the line of the leading idea which this volume
enforces
the idea of crisis in the destiny of this country, and
through
it in the destiny, of the world. The common sense of men
puts into homely phrase the great principles which underlie
great enterprises. One such phrase lies under the Christian
civilization of our land. It is " the nick of
time." The pres-
ent hour is, and always has been, " the nick of
time" in our
history. The principle which underlies all probationary ex-
perience comes to view in organized society with more stu-
pendous import than in individual destiny. This book puts
the evidence of that in a form of cumulative force which is
overwhelming.
Fifty years ago our watchful fathers discerned it in their
forecast of the future of the Republic. The wisest among
them even then began to doubt how long the original stock of
American society could bear the interfusion of elements
alien
to our history and to the faith of our ancestry. The
conviction
was then often expressed that the case was hopeless
Success in the work
of the world's conversion has, with
rare exceptions,
followed the lines of human growth and pro-
spective greatness.
But a single exception occurs to one's
memory that of the
Hawaiian Islands. Seldom has a nation
been converted to
Christ, only to die. The general law has
been that
Christianity should seat itself in the great metropoli-
tan centers of
population and of civilized progress. It has
allied itself with
the most virile races. It has taken possession
of the most vigorous
and enterprising nations. The coloniz-
ing races and nations
have been its favorites. It has aban-
doned the dying for
the nascent languages. Its affinities have
always been for the
youthful, the forceful, the progressive,
the aspiring in human
character, and for that stock of mind
from which such
character springs. By natural sequence, tne
localities where
those elements of powerful manhood are, or
are to be, in most
vigorous development, have been the strategic
points of which our
religion has taken possession as by a
masterly military
genius.
SOME OF THE TABLE OF CONTENTS
(TOC)
CHAPTER V
PERILS. ROMANISM.
I. Conflict of
Romanism with the fundamental principles of our
government ; liberty
of conscience ; free speech, and a free press ;
free schools ;
loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to the Pope.
2. Attitude toward
our free institutions. 3. Rapid growth of Roman-
ism in the United
States, especially in the West. P. 46.
CHAPTER VI.
PERILS. MORMONISM.
Polygamy not an
essential part of Mormonism; might be de-
stroyed without
weakening the system. Strength lies in ecclesiastical
despotism. Mormon
designs. The remedy. P. 59.
CHAPTER VII.
PERILS. INTEMPERANCE.
I. The progress of
civilization renders men the easier victims of
intemperance.
Civilization must destroy the liquor traffic, or be de-
stroyed by it. The
problem serious enough in the East. What of
the West, where the
relative power of the saloon is two-and-one-half
times greater?
II. The liquor power;
wealth; organization; aims; methods.
Influence in Rocky
Mountains and beyond. P. 68.
CHAPTER VIII.
PERILS. SOCIALISM.
The Socialistic Labor
Party and the International Working-men's
Association.
Teachings. Numbers. Conditions favorable to growth :
1. Immigration ; 2.
Increasing Individualism;
3. Prevalence of skepticism
; 4. Development of classes
5. Growing
discontent. Modern enginery of destruction.
Conditions at the
West peculiarly favorable to the growth of Socialism. P. 85.
CHAPTER IX.
PERILS. WEALTH.
Comparative statement
of wealth. Rate of increase. Advantages
over Europe. Dangers:
1. Mammonism; 2. Materialism;
3. Luxuriousness ; 4.
Congestion of wealth. All these dangers
greater at the West
than at the East. P. 1*2.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ANGLO-SAXON AND
THE WORLD'S FUTURE.
Reasons why the
world's future is to be shaped by the Anglo-
Saxon. The United
States to be the seat of his power. The most
marked
characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race are here being empha-
sized, and the race
schooled for the competition with other races,
which will begin as
soon as the pressure of population on the means
of support is felt in
the United States. The result of that competi-
tion. The
responsibility of this generation. P. 159.
EXCERPTS
CHAPTER XIV MONEY AND THE KINGDOM
Christianize the
immigrant and he will be easily
Americanized.
Christianity is the solvent of all race
antipathies. Give the
Romanist a pure gospel and he
will cease to be a
Romanist. It has already been shown
that Christian
education will solve the Mormon prob-
lem. The temperance
reform, like all others which de-
pend on popular
agitation, must have money, and i*
being retarded by the
lack of it. Concerning the rem-
edy for socialism,
accept the opinion of an economist
who has made it a
subject of special study. Says Prof.
Ely : " It is an
undoubted fact that modern socialism
of the worst type is
spreading to an alarming extent
among our laboring
classes, both foreign and native. I
think the danger is
of such a character as should arouse
the Christian people
of this country to most earnest
efforts for the
evangelization of the poorer classes,
particularly in large
cities. What is needed is Chris-
tianity, and the
Christian church can do far more than
political economists
toward a reconciliation of social
classes. The church's
remedy for social discontent and
dynamite bombs is
Christianity as taught in the New
Testament. Now in all
this you will find nothing new.
It is only
significant in this regard : others have come
to these conclusions
from the study of the Bible ; from
a totally different
starting point, from the study of
Political economy, I
have come to the same goal."*
But the acceptance of
the Christian doctrine con-
cerning property
would have a direct, as well as indi-
rect, influence on
socialism. Let us, therefore, dwell
a moment on the
subject.
In the popular
ferment, a hundred years ago, which
culminated in the
French ^Revolution, the demand was
for equal rights and
the watchword was Liberty. There
is a popular ferment
throughout Europe to-day which
is more universal and
extends to the United States.
The popular demand
now is equality of condition, and
the watchword is
Property a cry the meaning of
which the dullest and
most earthly can understand.
This movement, which
is steadily gathering force, re-
sults from the two
most striking facts of the Nineteenth
century : first, the
general diffusion of knowledge
through the press,
which has wonderfully multiplied
wants up and down the
entire social scale ; and, sec-
ond, the creation of
immense wealth by means of the
steam engine. But
this wealth, which is necessary to
the satisfaction of
these wants, has been massed. In a
word, the difficulty
is knowledge multiplied and popu-
larized, and wealth
multiplied and centralized.
The right
distribution of property, which is the ker-
nel of the social
question, is the great problem of our
civilization ; and it
may well be doubted whether the
true solution will be
found until the church accepts,
both in doctrine and
practice, the teaching of God's
"Word touching
possessions. For the church is re-
sponsible for public
opinion on all moral questions, and
no great question of
rights can be settled for the world
until Christian men
come into right relations with it.
The inexorable law of
our present industrial system
is that the cost of
subsistence determines the rate of
wages. This makes no
provision for the higher wants
of increasing
intelligence, and therefore insures an in-
creasing popular
discontent. It would seem that the
solution of the great
difficulties between capital and
labor must be found
in some form of co-operation by
which the workman
will be admitted to a just share in
the profits of his
labor. Professor Cairns, who is con-
sidered one of the
greatest economists England has
produced, believes
that co-operative production affords
the laboring classes
" the sole means of escape from a
harsh and hopeless
destiny" (" Leading Principles," p.
338). Referring to
several thousand co-operative so-
cieties in England,
having some millions of capital,
Thomas Hughes says :
" I still look to this movement
as the best hope for
England and other lands." The
eminent statistician,
Carroll D. Wright, the head of
the Massachusetts
Bureau of Statistics of Labor, re-
ferring to the duty
of the rich manufacturer to regard
himself as " an
instrument of God for the upbuilding
of the race,"
and the promotion of the highest welfare
of those in his
employ, says : " This may sound like
sentiment. I am
willing to call it sentiment ; but I
know it means the
best material prosperity, and that
every employer who
has been guided by such senti-
ments has been
rewarded two-fold ; first, in witnessing
the wonderful
improvement of his people, and, second,
in seeing his
dividends increase, and the wages of ins
operatives increase
with his dividends. The factory
system of the future
will be run on this basis. The
instances of such are
multiplying rapidly now." Man-
ifestly, the
acceptance on the part of Christian capital-
ists of the
scriptural doctrine of possessions would
greatly facilitate
the introduction of co-operation or
any other plan which
promised justice to the work-
man.
The Christian man who
is not willing to make the
largest profits which
an honest regard for the laws of
trade permits is a
rare man. But the laws of trade
permit much that the
laws of God do not permit.
Many transactions are
commercially honest which ax>
not righteous. If,
now, a man accepts the truth that
his possessions are a
trust to be administered for God's
glory, he will not
consent to increase them by any un-
righteous means. And
since justice and righteousness,
like honesty, will
prove to be the best policy, the ac-
ceptance on the part
of Christian men of a thoroughly
righteous plan of
co-operation between capital and la-
bor would eventually
compel its general acceptance.
Let Christian men
gain a correct conception of their
relations to their
possessions, let them accept the duty
of Christian
stewardship, and it would command their
getting as well as
their spending. There would be no
motive to drive a
sharp bargain. It would purify
trade. It would
mediate between capital and labor.
It would destroy the
foundation on which the rising
structure of
socialism rests. It would cut one of the
principal roots of
popular unbelief ; for extended in-
quiry in Cincinnati
elicited the almost unanimous re-
sponse that the
reason workingmen neglect the
churches is that
there are on the church rolls the
names of employers
who wrong their employes.
The acceptance of the
true principle of Christian
giving is urged upon
us by the fact that money is
power, which is
needed everywhere for elevating and
saving men. It is
further urged upon us by the fact
that only such a view
of possessions will save us from
the great and
imminent perils of wealth. God might
have sent his angels
to sing his gospel through the
world, or he might
have written it on the sky, and
made the clouds his
messengers ; but we need to bear
the responsibility of
publishing that gospel. He might
mak^ the safe of
every benevolent society a gold mine
as unfailing as the
widow's cruse of oil ; but we need
to give that gold.
The tendency of human nature, in-
tensified by our
commercial activity, is to make the life
a whirlpool a great
maelstrom which draws every-
thing into itself.
"What is needed to-day is a grand re-
versal of the
movement, a transformation of the life
into a fountain. And
in an exceptional degree is this
the need of
Anglo-Saxons. Their strong love of lib-
erty, and their acquisitiveness,
afford a powerful temp-
tation to offer some
substitute for self-abnegation.
We would call no man
master. We must take Christ
as master. We would
possess all things ; we must
surrender all things.
One of the grave
problems before us is how to make
great material
prosperity conduce to individual
advancement. The
severest poverty is unfavorable to
morality. Up to a
certain point increase of property
serves to elevate man
morally and intellectually, while
it improves him
physically. But, as nations grow rich,
they are prone to
become self-indulgent, effeminate,
immoral. The physical
nature becomes less robust,
the intellectual
nature less vigorous, the moral less
pure. The pampered
civilizations of old had to be re-
invigorated, from
time to time, with fresh infusions of
barbaric blood a
remedy no longer available. If we
cannot find in
Christianity a remedy or preventive, our
Christian
civilization and the world itself is a failure;
and our rapidly
increasing wealth, like the
"cankered heaps of
strange-achieved gold,"
will curse us unto destruction.
AN OUTRODUCTION
COMMENTARY BY EUGENE PLAWIUK
I came across this interesting text by an American Evangelical Alliance, while presumably Baptist, it was non sectarian in support of American Protestant Sects,including the Mormons if they were reformed.
America is a self realization of two forces, those of the liberal enlightenment, Freemasonry and its bourgeois values were perfectly crafted for both colonial and post colonial America.
It represents both the left and the right, the anarchist artisan, and the libertarian self employed owner, the artisan and the self employed both could become at anytime, a boss or a worker, until the rise of industrialization immediately before, during and after the Civil War then the artisanal nature of America changed.
The Knights of St. Crispin are an excellent example of how the first Capitalist Industrial War, the American Civil War, changed the nature of shoe making. The Knights were founded in the 18th century as a craft guild association and proto union, for shoemakers. At that time in North America, and into the middle of the 19th century, shoe making like many crafts were labour intensive, and involved the whole family.
The Knights were an East Coast phenomena in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,Maine, into the Maritimes, such as New Brunswick and Quebec in Canada.
The Knights originated in the UK and their rites and rituals were brought to North America through New Brunswick. Guild Associations are an ancient tradition among artisans and craftsmen. Like a union they determine the piece work wages that they will make as well as the price set for the sale of the finished product. In other words they controlled the means of production directly.
In this they were no different then their predecessors in the weaving trades, who were being transformed into mass workers in factories in Europe. Not all trades suffered mass industrialization as early and as totally as the Weavers did. And so various guild associations carried on like the Knights of St. Crispin who originated in the late medieval period.
Shoemaking then was a family affair, and in America a family would also be a land owner and a sharer in the commonwealth of the community , such as grazing lands, since land was so freely available more so than in Europe. This allowed the family to produce their own food and shelter, and to practice their craft and trade as well. This required people to be living in towns, villages and cities.
In shoemaking the father did the heavy work with the hard leather, and hammering of soles,
the mother cut and fashioned the shoe and the children sewed with their small hands, a practice still conducted today in developing countries that used child labour. The father also sewed, especially the heavy awl work of stitching. All this was done to Knights standards,
if a shoemaker was found to have sold cheap or below standards, fines would be applied as has been the guild tradition for thousands of years.
There were weavers in America too at this time but they too like the shoemakers would become extinct crafts as industrialization created mass workers for the war effort. A decline in active members of the Knights of St. Crispin can be seen as steady for a decade prior to the Civil War, by the end of the Civil War the Knights only existed in Quebec and New Brunswick. In the United States they were replaced with mass production of shoes for the metropoles, and for the war. The workers were women and children in these factories, leaving the men to find a different trade, or work elsewhere, or farm.
In the North the Civil War produced a manufacturing industry and a new capitalist class,
it also required masses of workers, these came from immigration even more so than from the freed slaves of the South. Chicago is a good example of the integration that mass production created, in the ghettos around the packing plants were German, Polish and Ukrainian immigrants who arrived at the same time as many of the Black families coming to join their relatives in Chicago where they heard there were jobs to be had. After the Civil War the abattoirs of Chicago fed the nation and its commodities exchange ruled the farmers of America.
Chicago was America's mass industrialized city, it has long been the home to the commodity exchange, especially in Cattle, and it was connect to Canada via Winnipeg which was an equivalent boom town of banks, railroads, grains and beef. Americas farmers were beholding to Chicago in many ways, those folks who earlier had been self employed now moved off the land and into the city. That land became privatized, parceled out and bought by farmers. The farmers traded their cattle in Chicago, they got feed, fertilizer and most importantly farm implements
Chicago had a booming farm equipment manufacturing industry, employing those former
shoemakers, and other small craftsmen, as well as immigrants. working in these farm equipment plants. One of those plants would become the focus of the International Workingmen's Association, the Knights of Labour, and members of the Socialist Labour Party. It was the McCormick Works and a year after the publication of this pamphlet, and the year was 1886, the fight was for the eight hour day, and the resulting strike and protest lead the famous Haymarket Riot.
It is in this time of rapid capitalist growth in America that the Evangelical movement sees
the need for another Home Missionary Movement to combat Catholicism brought in by the Immigrants from Europe. Conversion for heathen and papist was the cry. As it had been in 1826.
At that time America faced its first anti masonic purge and Baptist Revivalism which ended up in the Know Nothing Party. The Baptist revival was an evangelical mass movement
to confirm America as a Protestant Nation, the first ever 'pure Aryan' Protestant nation.
Unlike Europe where all nations were Catholic and then converted to Protestantism.
Despite their roots in European culture, what had been the Anabaptist religious movement changed when it arrived in America, it dropped Ana, and simply became Baptist. And it was
generic at that, anyone could call themselves Baptist, even Presbyterians. The Anabaptists that remained were the collectivist cults, like Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish, Dukhbour.
America created modern Protestant Evangelicalism and modern Protestantism as well as allowing for all kinds of cults and sects Christian or otherwise. Why cults, because they believed in the end times, the rapture, what is now mainstream for the 700 Club was then
cultic beliefs which meant persecution.
New York State, was home to many of the early alternative sects, cults of Christianity and of Spiritualists and Soothsayers, Theosophists to Freemasons, Odd Fellows and other fraternal orders and to Nativist Sects.
The communistic protestants the Shakers were there as was the town of Lilydale full of Spiritualist communing with dead It was in this spiritual milieu that Joseph Smith traveled in before his revelation and creation of the Mormon Church, with rites and rituals he 'borrowed' from Freemasonry.
One of the newest forms of Protestantism that caught in America more so than even in its native England, was Millenarism which has existed since the time of the Old Testament if not even earlier. But we can document these movements, and they occur as features of
End Times, Apocalyptic cults believing in the end of the world. In America these cults became so called Christian sects like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah Witness movement. While they originate in Protestantism, they are not Christian, they are cultic interpretations of the bible to prove their predictions. It is still with us today and it calls itself the Moral Majority.
Ironically the author of this propaganda pamphlet would be considered a socialist heretic to today's Moral Majority and other End Times types of Evangelists. They would not even recognize his Aryan Anglo Saxon as being the same as their Nativist White Nationalism.
There are similarities in this work with today's White Nationalism, it reference to Aryan and Anglo Saxonism as Aryan. Aryan as Christian, and that means White people. There are no Negros in this book and there are no Red Men, not even the white fraternity by that name.
This is the empty frontier of America, of FJ Turner, no Indians, and of course no freed or runaway slaves. There is lots of land, minerals, lumber, all free for the taking. It is the West that our author wants to fill with evangelical Aryan Christians. No others need apply especially not immigrants
So along with missing people of Afro American descent or First Nations, also the with the immigrant, they must be the right kind of White People, not Catholic, not socialist or union trouble makers, nor rampant capitalists.
Our author would be astonished to learn that today his American counterpart scoffs at the idea socialism in America. And yet here it is, of course like today's Aryan Nationalist Nativist it is not natural or homegrown, it is again blamed on the immigrant, whether from Canada or Europe, just like Catholicism, is not considered native to America, despite the founding of North America by the French and Jesuits.
Again like populist politicians who decry the rich and powerful, like Trump or the Kingfisher, even Teddy Roosevelt, there belief is in Aryan idealism, just as the author equates as did Roosevelt, Aryanism with Americanism with Manliness, Strength, and Moral Purity. Of course such a being, a person or a nation then is entitled to rule over the world.
Teddy Roosevelt could have said this so could Steve Bannon. In fact you probably have read the same statements in any number of right wing commentaries published by such intellectual light weight pundits as Bannon and ilk.
Finally lets discuss the most obvious statement, the idea of Crisis. What crisis, the author in the end attests it is one of Aryan or Christian civilization the two being equivalent. A multicultural America is the bugaboo of the assimilationist, scratch the surface and you find a nativist Aryan.
The real crisis as it is today, is the changing nature of bourgeois capitalist society. As it was then it is today, society is going through major changes at all levels, including the transformation of the means of production into robotics, cybernetics and AI. It means capitalism itself is transforming through technological change, not just to a gig economy but eventually a return to artisanal production at home using new technologies like 3D printing.
As well the collapsing nature of capitalism as well as its positivist transformations, it remains in permanent crisis, why in order to sell weapons, oil, etc. Since the turn of last century the Barbarism of capitalism that we first saw in the American Civil War created the First and Second World Wars, interrupted by two revolutions the Russian and Spanish.
Since then there has been no real post war peace, war continued on the Korean Peninsula,
unresolved it was the beginning of many failed missions by American Imperialism to dominate the Asia Pacific as well as Europe and the Middle East. Today North Korea is
convenient scapegoat that loves the role and attention it merits
After Korea it was Vietnam, picking up from the French who abandoned the struggle against
post war nationalism and anti-colonialism, something you would have thought America would champion, but this was the era of the Red Scare and the Cold War.
Cuba was subject to American Imperialism as well as Santa Domingo, whose general strike was viciously put down by American Troops. many of them black being asked to shoot
unarmed protestors.
As Michael Kidron wrote post modern Capitalism and its State are what Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex and what Kidron calls the Permanent Arms Economy, as famed Canadian economist Kenneth Galbraith also discussed in his book and TV series
that came out at the same time in Seventies.
Kidron has been proven right by the continuous sale of weapons world wide, and it is these weapons that are the source of other crimes, in particular drug running, in order to pay for them. America is the worlds largest gun runner, if its not creating wars, invasions it is selling weapons to those in conflict.
Its most recent sale to a client state, was over $100 million dollars to Saudi Arabia, for them to also gun run and to use against the Shia whom they are conducting an ethnic cleansing war in Yemen.
Wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all caused by the USA in its so called war on Terror, which is just another name for gun running.
Today we face once again the choice Socialism for survival and sustainability, vs Barbarism.
The Barbarians are Aryan Nationalist White Nationalists America, Brit, Russian, French,etc etc Nationalists. Nationalism is Fascism.
.
Chicago had a booming farm equipment manufacturing industry, employing those former
shoemakers, and other small craftsmen, as well as immigrants. working in these farm equipment plants. One of those plants would become the focus of the International Workingmen's Association, the Knights of Labour, and members of the Socialist Labour Party. It was the McCormick Works and a year after the publication of this pamphlet, and the year was 1886, the fight was for the eight hour day, and the resulting strike and protest lead the famous Haymarket Riot.
It is in this time of rapid capitalist growth in America that the Evangelical movement sees
the need for another Home Missionary Movement to combat Catholicism brought in by the Immigrants from Europe. Conversion for heathen and papist was the cry. As it had been in 1826.
At that time America faced its first anti masonic purge and Baptist Revivalism which ended up in the Know Nothing Party. The Baptist revival was an evangelical mass movement
to confirm America as a Protestant Nation, the first ever 'pure Aryan' Protestant nation.
Unlike Europe where all nations were Catholic and then converted to Protestantism.
Despite their roots in European culture, what had been the Anabaptist religious movement changed when it arrived in America, it dropped Ana, and simply became Baptist. And it was
generic at that, anyone could call themselves Baptist, even Presbyterians. The Anabaptists that remained were the collectivist cults, like Mennonites, Hutterites, Amish, Dukhbour.
America created modern Protestant Evangelicalism and modern Protestantism as well as allowing for all kinds of cults and sects Christian or otherwise. Why cults, because they believed in the end times, the rapture, what is now mainstream for the 700 Club was then
cultic beliefs which meant persecution.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is the largest of several Adventist groups which arose from the Millerite movement of the 1840s in upstate New York, a phase of the Second Great Awakening. William Miller predicted on the basis of Daniel 8:14–16 and the "day-year principle" that Jesus Christ would return to Earth between the spring of 1843 and the spring of 1844. In the summer of 1844, Millerites came to believe that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, understood to be the biblical Day of Atonement for that year. When this did not happen (an event known as the "Great Disappointment"), most of his followers disbanded and returned to their original churches.
New York State, was home to many of the early alternative sects, cults of Christianity and of Spiritualists and Soothsayers, Theosophists to Freemasons, Odd Fellows and other fraternal orders and to Nativist Sects.
The communistic protestants the Shakers were there as was the town of Lilydale full of Spiritualist communing with dead It was in this spiritual milieu that Joseph Smith traveled in before his revelation and creation of the Mormon Church, with rites and rituals he 'borrowed' from Freemasonry.
One of the newest forms of Protestantism that caught in America more so than even in its native England, was Millenarism which has existed since the time of the Old Testament if not even earlier. But we can document these movements, and they occur as features of
End Times, Apocalyptic cults believing in the end of the world. In America these cults became so called Christian sects like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah Witness movement. While they originate in Protestantism, they are not Christian, they are cultic interpretations of the bible to prove their predictions. It is still with us today and it calls itself the Moral Majority.
Ironically the author of this propaganda pamphlet would be considered a socialist heretic to today's Moral Majority and other End Times types of Evangelists. They would not even recognize his Aryan Anglo Saxon as being the same as their Nativist White Nationalism.
There are similarities in this work with today's White Nationalism, it reference to Aryan and Anglo Saxonism as Aryan. Aryan as Christian, and that means White people. There are no Negros in this book and there are no Red Men, not even the white fraternity by that name.
This is the empty frontier of America, of FJ Turner, no Indians, and of course no freed or runaway slaves. There is lots of land, minerals, lumber, all free for the taking. It is the West that our author wants to fill with evangelical Aryan Christians. No others need apply especially not immigrants
So along with missing people of Afro American descent or First Nations, also the with the immigrant, they must be the right kind of White People, not Catholic, not socialist or union trouble makers, nor rampant capitalists.
Our author would be astonished to learn that today his American counterpart scoffs at the idea socialism in America. And yet here it is, of course like today's Aryan Nationalist Nativist it is not natural or homegrown, it is again blamed on the immigrant, whether from Canada or Europe, just like Catholicism, is not considered native to America, despite the founding of North America by the French and Jesuits.
Again like populist politicians who decry the rich and powerful, like Trump or the Kingfisher, even Teddy Roosevelt, there belief is in Aryan idealism, just as the author equates as did Roosevelt, Aryanism with Americanism with Manliness, Strength, and Moral Purity. Of course such a being, a person or a nation then is entitled to rule over the world.
But, as nations grow rich,they are prone to become self-indulgent, effeminate,immoral. The physical nature becomes less robust, the intellectual nature less vigorous, the moral less pure. The pampered civilizations of old had to be re-invigorated, from time to time, with fresh infusions of barbaric blood a remedy no longer available. If we cannot find in Christianity a remedy or preventive, ourChristian civilization and the world itself is a failure;and our rapidly increasing wealth, like the "cankered heaps of strange-achieved gold," will curse us unto destruction.
Teddy Roosevelt could have said this so could Steve Bannon. In fact you probably have read the same statements in any number of right wing commentaries published by such intellectual light weight pundits as Bannon and ilk.
Finally lets discuss the most obvious statement, the idea of Crisis. What crisis, the author in the end attests it is one of Aryan or Christian civilization the two being equivalent. A multicultural America is the bugaboo of the assimilationist, scratch the surface and you find a nativist Aryan.
The real crisis as it is today, is the changing nature of bourgeois capitalist society. As it was then it is today, society is going through major changes at all levels, including the transformation of the means of production into robotics, cybernetics and AI. It means capitalism itself is transforming through technological change, not just to a gig economy but eventually a return to artisanal production at home using new technologies like 3D printing.
As well the collapsing nature of capitalism as well as its positivist transformations, it remains in permanent crisis, why in order to sell weapons, oil, etc. Since the turn of last century the Barbarism of capitalism that we first saw in the American Civil War created the First and Second World Wars, interrupted by two revolutions the Russian and Spanish.
Since then there has been no real post war peace, war continued on the Korean Peninsula,
unresolved it was the beginning of many failed missions by American Imperialism to dominate the Asia Pacific as well as Europe and the Middle East. Today North Korea is
convenient scapegoat that loves the role and attention it merits
After Korea it was Vietnam, picking up from the French who abandoned the struggle against
post war nationalism and anti-colonialism, something you would have thought America would champion, but this was the era of the Red Scare and the Cold War.
Cuba was subject to American Imperialism as well as Santa Domingo, whose general strike was viciously put down by American Troops. many of them black being asked to shoot
unarmed protestors.
As Michael Kidron wrote post modern Capitalism and its State are what Eisenhower called the Military Industrial Complex and what Kidron calls the Permanent Arms Economy, as famed Canadian economist Kenneth Galbraith also discussed in his book and TV series
that came out at the same time in Seventies.
Kidron has been proven right by the continuous sale of weapons world wide, and it is these weapons that are the source of other crimes, in particular drug running, in order to pay for them. America is the worlds largest gun runner, if its not creating wars, invasions it is selling weapons to those in conflict.
Its most recent sale to a client state, was over $100 million dollars to Saudi Arabia, for them to also gun run and to use against the Shia whom they are conducting an ethnic cleansing war in Yemen.
Wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, all caused by the USA in its so called war on Terror, which is just another name for gun running.
Today we face once again the choice Socialism for survival and sustainability, vs Barbarism.
The Barbarians are Aryan Nationalist White Nationalists America, Brit, Russian, French,etc etc Nationalists. Nationalism is Fascism.
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