Hundreds packed the First United Methodist Church in Sioux
Falls, South Dakota, on October 25 to honor Senator George
McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate who died
earlier this week. He was one of the last great prairie
progressives who were deeply shaped by Social Gospel liberal
Protestantism. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, McGovern
himself studied for the ministry at a Methodist seminary. In his
later decades he was active in the United Methodist Church, whose
liberal policies replicated his own, and some of whose bishops
openly backed his presidential bid against Richard Nixon.
Fueled by the 1908 Methodist Social Creed that was ecumenically
endorsed by the old Federal Council of Churches, early 20th century
liberal Methodism by the 1920s and 1930s was anti-war, suspicious
of capitalism, and supremely confident about perfecting society
through reforming legislation. Young McGovern must have eagerly
breathed in that religious idealism.
“For him, the Social Gospel was not just a theory, but the core
of his faith in seeking to make the world a better place,” recently
explained one former United Methodist seminary president who was a
McGovern friend. “Practically every speech and certainly every book
he wrote cited biblical references that were at the core of his
personal and political philosophy.” A denominational news service
report shared many similar quotes from church leaders hailing
McGovern. One retired bishop recalled having served as a McGovern
campaign volunteer in 1972.
The late Bishop James Armstrong, later famous as president of
the National Council of Churches in the 1980s when fending off
media attacks on church support for radically leftist causes, was
on the platform when his fellow Dakotan declared his presidential
candidacy. Bishop James Mathews, who was son-in-law to the
world-famous Methodist missionary to India E. Stanley Jones, also
publicly backed him, as did Bishop Gerald Kennedy, who once
appeared on the cover of Time magazine.
These Methodist clerics and many others saw in McGovern a
kindred spirit who could purify American democracy through his
Methodist earnestness. Bishop Armstrong, impressed by McGovern’s
opposition to his own party on the Vietnam War, saluted McGovern as
a “moderate” who embodied Judeo-Christian ideals. McGovern had long
split on the war from another Midwestern Methodist, Hubert
Humphrey, who represented a more centrist progressivism losing its
hold on both Democrats and Methodists. Of course, McGovern would be
remembered for shifting his party away from its traditional blue
collar base in favor of more professional liberal elites. The
party’s path also reflected Methodism’s leftward path in the late
20th century. Armstrong would also defend Senator McGovern’s
eventual abortion rights stance, which aligned with the
denomination’s.
McGovern’s zealous anti-war stance and his 1972 theme of “Come
Home America” also aligned with United Methodist opposition to
Vietnam, which had grown increasingly shrill during Nixon’s
presidency. Nixon himself, though originally a Quaker, had attended
a Methodist church during his earlier years in Washington, D.C. But
he became the first president of the century who largely avoided
official Methodist delegations because of their perceived
hostility, a policy mostly repeated by later Republican
presidents.
Although McGovern gained support from the New Left, his anti-war
politics and pseudo-isolationism echoed the progressive Methodism
of his youth. Post World War I official Methodism became pacifist
and somewhat isolationist, remaining so right up until Pearl
Harbor. The church’s 1944 General Conference only narrowly backed
World War II. McGovern himself left his studies at a Methodist
school to serve on a U.S. bomber in Europe. Like many liberal
Methodists who served in that war, he later was mostly hostile to
U.S. military action. As the U.S. prepared for the Iraq War in
2003, McGovern chose an event honoring his friend Bishop Mathews to
searingly condemn President Bush for needlessly sacrificing
American lives. Not a pacifist, during the Cambodian communist
holocaust of the mid 1970s he vaguely suggested military
intervention without fully admitting that U.S. withdrawal from
Indochina had facilitated the horror.
For many years McGovern belonged to Foundry United Methodist
Church in Washington, D.C., an increasingly liberal congregation
where another Midwestern senator, Bob Dole, was also long a member.
In his final days McGovern returned to Sioux Falls, where the local
United Methodist minister visited him. “Growing up the son of a
Wesleyan pastor, he was always around the church. He loved the
music,” the minister recalled to the denominational news service.
“In one of my recent visits with him we sang, ‘Leaning on the
Everlasting Arms.’ He started and I just joined in.”
As recently as September McGovern appeared for the installation
of the new local United Methodist bishop, who after his death
declared to the church news service: “Sen. McGovern embodies the
best of the Judea Christian prophetic tradition.” He was echoing
the words of another bishop when endorsing McGovern’s presidential
bid 40 years ago.
Nurtured by the Methodist faith of his youth, McGovern now
hopefully is “leaning on the everlasting arms.” Like nearly
everyone, he had his share of failed and lofty moments, but on a
larger scale. He represented one of the last gusts of prairie
progressivism blowing out of the Midwest nearly a century ago,
deeply shaped by an idealistic Methodism whose force has long since
receded.
