The smoke had barely cleared from the horrible Aurora, Colorado
theater shootings when the Capitol Hill-based United Methodist
lobby office issued its perfunctory call for gun control.
Citing United Methodism’s official support for a “ban on all
handguns,” the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society
also took its own metaphorical shots at a favorite nemesis. “Equal
to our sadness at this tragic loss of life is our disappointment at
Congress’ inability to place public safety above the interests of
the National Rifle Assn.,”
declared the lobby officials. “Our society can no longer afford
to allow the power of the gun lobby in its efforts to ensure
ownership without responsibility to keep Congress mute on this
pressing public-safety issue.”
Since at least 1972, the United Methodist Church, which then had
over 10 million members, has backed the elimination of private
handgun ownership, among other gun control measures. Having lost 3
million members in the U.S. since then, the denomination is finding
that its political lobbying, which never reflected most of the
membership, is now even less heeded.
But the denomination’s faith in laws to eliminate evil dates
back a century to an era when Methodism was one of America’s most
potent political forces. Daniel Okrent’s 2010
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, upon which
the 2011 PBS series on the history of Prohibition was based,
largely credited Methodist and Baptist clergy for leading the
successful campaign. Actually it was mostly Methodism, then
America’s largest Protestant force, and whose hierarchy made it
more conducive to waging a national struggle.
Gun control true believers insist eliminating private gun
ownership would eliminate killing. Far more sweepingly,
Prohibitionists of the early 20th century were confident that
eliminating liquor would suppress family break-down, workplace
accidents, indigence, gambling, prostitution, political corruption,
and a host of other social ills.
Their concerns were not entirely misplaced. Alcohol consumption
in the 19th century per capita was several times what it is today.
In an era of far less wealth, when most lived near the edges, and
before most women had jobs outside the home, a drunken husband
could lose the family farm and plunge his large family instantly
into poverty and the poor house.
Reducing alcohol consumption in America was a laudable goal. But
realists, especially Christians who understood human frailty,
should have realized that abolishing liquor was impossible. Nearly
all the major Protestant churches supported Prohibition, which went
into effect in 1920 after a lightning quick ratification. But the
Methodists, with a theology that emphasized the possibility of
personal spiritual perfection, were the most zealous.
Methodism had two large personalities who led their Prohibition
crusade. The Rev. Clarence True Wilson, originally an Oregon
pastor, created northern Methodism’s Board of Temperance,
Prohibition and Public Morals, which he led across 20 years, and
which is the predecessor to the current Methodist lobby. In the
1920s Wilson built the Methodist Building that is still so
prominently across the street from the U.S. Capitol and U.S.
Supreme Court. Wilson’s debating partner, agnostic lawyer Clarence
Darrow, sniffed that the Methodist Building was the “Methodist
Vatican” that allowed suspicious Methodist busybodies to sniff the
breath of congressmen in route to the U.S. Capitol. It housed, he
pronounced, the “most brutal, bigoted, ignorant bunch since the
Spanish Inquisition.”
The other Prohibition giant was Bishop James Cannon of southern
Methodism. He and Wilson together made national headlines from the
teens through the 1930s and were the preeminent religio-political
figures of their day. They routinely visited the White House, were
appeased and denounced by congressmen, and streamed across the
headlines of the New York Times and Washington
Post. They both advocated an America that was “bone dry” and
refused any compromise with “wet” Americans, which they tied to
corrupt, urban political machines blocking America’s path to
righteousness. They even resisted a Prohibition allowing the sale
of wine and beer, which would have aligned brewers and vineyards
with them against the producers of distilled spirits. Understanding
themselves as a ‘militant Christian power in a war against
alcohol,” they planned to labor until liquor was “banished from the
face of the earth.” Unable to suppress alcohol successfully in
America, the Methodist prohibitionists envisioned their cause going
global. Public officials who resisted were “traitors to the
nation,” according to Rev. Wilson.
In 1928, northern Methodism pledged: “We will not be stampeded;
we will not retract; we will not cease to speak by tongue and pen
and vote; we will not turn back; we have enlisted for the duration
of the conflict, which will end only in the complete extermination
of the beverage alcohol and traffic.” Bishop Cannon organized much
of southern Methodism against Democratic “wet” presidential
candidate Al Smith, who lost 6 former Confederate states, and the
election, thanks partly to Methodism.
Despite the sweeping 1928 victory, Prohibition soon collapsed,
as the Depression made governments even less prone to enforce, and
the public even less willing to comply. Bishop Cannon refused to
endorse President Herbert Hoover or FDR in 1932, and Rev. Wilson
endorsed Socialist candidate Norman Thomas. After Prohibition’s
quick repeal in1933, Wilson blamed a “blind populace stampeded by
the wet press and the crooked politicians.” He suffered an
emotional collapse, retired, and soon died.
Of Bishop Cannon, sardonic polemicist H. L. Mencken pronounced:
“Six years ago he was the undisputed boss of the United States.
Congress was his troop of Boy Scouts, and Presidents trembled and
gobbled cloves whenever his name was mentioned.” Absent
Prohibition, “his whole world is in collapse.” But Cannon was more
resilient, and he moved forward, even in advanced age, to befriend
Mencken, oppose the New Deal, denounce Nazism, and urge war against
the Axis powers.
Methodism, rather than stepping back to reflect on its 30 year
initially successful but ultimately failed Prohibition crusade,
instead accelerated its political activism. The Methodism Building
became the headquarters of America’s Religious Left in Washington,
D.C., housing radicals of every cause especially from the 1960s
onward. It still clung to an uncompromising perfectionism that
insisted evil could be banished, and the New Jerusalem established,
with the passage of just a few more laws.
Of course, presidents and congressmen no longer “tremble and
gobble” before Methodism and its lobbyists, who are largely
ignored. Banning handguns, even after 40 years of endorsement by
Methodism, will never happen. But maybe other uncompromising
idealists and utopians, who believe human nature can be transformed
at the stroke of a pen, will heed the lessons of Methodism and
Prohibition.
