Evangelism and American social progressive movements

[kwassa]

since I wanted to know more myself, and really was only trying to learn about the differences between evangelism, fundamentalism, and pentacostalism ....

I ran into very interesting stuff.

like
http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/defining_evangelicalism.html

By the decades prior to the War Between the States, a largely-evangelical "Benevolent Empire" (in historian Martin Marty's words) was actively attempting to reshape American society through such reforms as temperance, the early women's movement, various benevolent and betterment societies, and-most controversial of all-the abolition movement.

http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1862

from a very long article:

The Holiness Churches: A Significant Ethical Tradition

by Donald W. Dayton



The earliest issue of the Holiness movement was abolitionism. The early editors of the Guide to Holiness were abolitionists. Oberlin College went so far as to advocate "civil disobedience" in the face of the fugitive slave laws (leading to the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue Case -- an important event in the history of American civil liberties). The Wesleyan Methodist Church was explicitly abolitionist at its founding, and much early literature of the denomination has recently come back into print for "black studies" programs. One meaning of the "free" in Free Methodist was that church’s abolitionism. Holiness people find some vindication in William Gravely’s recent study Gilbert Haven: Methodist Abolitionist (Abingdon, 1973). Haven, a Methodist bishop claimed as well by the Holiness movement, was an ardent reformer, abolitionist and feminist who went so far as to advocate interracial marriage and who maintained his concerns into the era of Reconstruction when many abolitionists were moving on to other issues. Gravely’s book suggests that Haven’s positions, actually a century ahead of their time, have finally come into their own.


Just as in the 1960s, in Haven’s time agitation on the race issue led to concern for the role of women. In addition to erasing the color line, Oberlin College became the first to attempt coeducation; the school graduated a number of the most vigorous and radical feminists of the era. The first women’s rights convention was held in the Wesleyan Methodist Church of Seneca Falls, New York. Antoinette Brown, the first woman to be ordained in an American church, was a graduate of Oberlin, and at her ordination Wesleyan Methodist minister Luther Lee preached on "Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel" (1853). Wesleyans themselves began to experiment with the ordination of women in the 1860s. Catherine Booth, who with her husband, William, was cofounder of the Salvation Army, was also an ardent feminist; she insisted on radical equality for women in the new organization. In a book published in 1891, B. T. Roberts, founder of the Free Methodists, argued in favor of Ordaining Women, though his denomination did not capitulate until 1974.