The Social Gospel Movement in the South

As part of the Vanderbilt University Sesquicentennial celebration, last fall the Wendland-Cook Program was awarded a Sesquicentennial grant for our project, “The Unexplored Legacy of the Social Gospel Movement in the South: The Vanderbilt Contribution.” This Interventions forum is the final forum in a series of three on this subject. To read the first forum introducing the topic and series, read here: The Social Gospel Movement in the South. To read the second forum on the topic, exploring the relationship between cooperative movements, ecology, and the social gospel, read here: Take Back the Land

This forum explores the legacy of education institutions that fostered and supported the social gospel movement in the south, primarily focusing on Vanderbilt Divinity School, where Alva Taylor taught, Commonwealth College in Arkansas, where Claude Williams was a key player, and at Highlander Center for Research and Education, where Howard Kester, Alva Taylor, and Claude Williams all were active. Panelists explore the importance of education as a force for economic and political change, and how education institutions are often contested spaces laden with economic and political power. Each panelist will also explore the states of educational institutions today can continue to play a crucial role in economic and political democracy.

Contributors: Aaron Stauffer, Arelis Benítez, and Wilson Dickinson

Aaron Stauffer

1 March 2024

In September of 1938, Claude Williams, a Presbyterian minister and graduate of Vanderbilt Divinity School, was unanimously voted out by the executive council of the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union (STFU) for purported activity with the Communist Party. Williams was one of the most effective organizers of the STFU — widely recognized as a charismatic preacher and organizer whose deep roots in rural farming in Tennessee and Arkansas helped him to bring together Black and white farmers to fight for their economic and political freedom in a time of deep racial and capitalist violence. Howard Kester was at one point Williams’ dear friend at Vanderbilt. And, yet, in September of ’38 Kester was one of the more vocal opponents of Williams. The two friends had spent decades organizing together, only to have this bitter experience of betrayal mar their friendship.

Williams’ removal from the STFU was based on the claims that Williams was a Communist directing a Communist labor school, Commonwealth College, located in the rural, mountainous county of Polk County in southwest Arkansas. STFU’s severance with Williams came with the severance with Commonwealth, casting the death knell of the school. It closed in 1940 by Arkansas state mandate, primarily due to the boisterous claims of a Baptist preacher who lived near Commonwealth.

At one point in the early 1930s Commonwealth was one of the more renowned and notorious labor schools in the United States, second perhaps only to Brookwood Labor College and Highlander Folk School (now, Highlander Center for Education and Research —for those interested, see this wonderful forum The Wendland-Cook Program hosted with Highlander in 2020 on “Radical Religion in the South”).

The story of Commonwealth is perhaps more familiar to our contemporary moment than many realize — even though many people have never heard of Commonwealth College. Friends betray us, stab us in the back; solidarity is hard won and often influenced by conditions outside our control. If one wants to understand the plight and success of radical movements in the U.S. South in the 1920s, 30s and 40s, studying Commonwealth is a good place to start.

One of the lessons Commonwealth learned still holds true for us today: the Left needs to be equally concerned with economic democracy and is it with political democracy — and winning economic democracy needs labor as much as it does politicians. We need to organize the polls and the workplace. Learning this takes time — we need schools of democracy, even if they are complicated, imperfect examples.

Commonwealth founders were some of the most famous socialists of their day, making the story of Commonwealth College a story as much one of radical labor education as it does about cooperative communal living experiments in the early 1920s and 1930s. Beginning in a transplant of the Llano del Rio Cooperative colony, the college was founded in southern Louisiana in 1923, but moved to Mena County, Arkansas due to early factionalism with the NewLlano commune. Katherine and Frank O’Hare and William Zeuch first dreamed up the idea of a labor school and self-sustaining cooperative farming community when they met in Ruskin, Florida, a similar venture founded in 1908 that drew inspiration from the cooperative movement in England. Katherine O’Hare was a Kansan whose spellbinding speaking ability brought her renown the world over and yet whose rabid white racism is so characteristic of some parts of the left in the early 20th century and yet still so disappointing. William Zeuch was the college’s first and longest director. Zeuch’s prickly personality overshadowed his deep commitment to liberal arts education and the project of radical communes living out the new social order. Commonwealth drew deeply from movements for cooperative economics, American democratic Socialism and the labor movement, and utopian ventures at the turn of the 20th century to realize the “cooperative commonwealth.”

In 2000, when William Cobb was writing the definitive account of the school, the Arkansas plot where the college once stood was then occupied by a breeding ground for Arab and Egyptian horses. Perhaps it has now changed hands, but only rubble remains of the school. This could be a metaphor for the broader population’s sense of the left’s legacy in the South. But underneath lies a deeper story that shows how intricately connected movements for liberation and economic democracy are in the South. This grant project — The Unexplored Legacy of the Social Gospel Movement in the South: The Vanderbilt Contribution — demonstrates how movements are so deeply relational, but no less tumultuous because of that. Before Williams and Kester went to organize for the STFU, perhaps the most powerful tenant farming union this country has ever seen, they refined their commitment to this movement at Vanderbilt School of Religion by taking Alva Taylor’s social ethics classes together with fellow future organizers and preachers Don West and Ward Rogers. Follow their stories long enough and you see how places like Commonwealth bring you back to the importance of places like Vanderbilt — places of experimentation, of new thought, of practical endeavors to change social, political, and economic evils and injustices.

Rev. Aaron Stauffer, PhD, is the Associate Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice and Director of Online Learning at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. His book Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Values, and Broad-based Community Organizing was published by Oxford University Press in 2024. He graduated from Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York in 2020 with a PhD in social ethics.

Arelis Benítez

12 February 2024

At eighteen years old, I unexpectedly preached a sermon at my home church and shared the good news about how God had woken me up very early that Sabbath morning and called me into ministry. Humbly, I stood before my congregation feeling that my feet were firmly planted and marveled that my voice was, for the first time, not shaking as I spoke from the pulpit. At that age, I remember wrestling with uncertainty for what “a calling” meant and what it would require of me, but I did not feel afraid. In fact, I longed to know how God would equip me to serve among my people. Shortly after the worship service ended, an elder pulled me aside and said that it was good that I, as a young woman, accepted to serve the Lord but to remember, “nadie es profeta en su propia tierra.” Citing Scripture, the elder forewarned, “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” (Luke 4:24, NRSVA). Knowing there was partial truth in the wholehearted sting of his words I sought to advocate for myself by questioning his assumption that I claimed to be a prophet. Unhesitatingly, I fired back, “Y ¿quién es profeta?” / “And who is a prophet?”

I go back to this moment and wonder if I should have felt as disheartened as I did when the elder pointed to my youth, my gender, and my sociocultural location as disqualifiers to lead or if I should have thanked him for imagining me as a “prophet.” Although I quickly discovered that the elder’s prediction held true, I did not dismay. Instead, I kept pushing and leaning into works of justice and transformation with communities that offered many opportunities for collaboration. Eventually, I made my way to Vanderbilt Divinity School to be trained by and among the prophets while still holding the question, “¿Quién es profeta?” / “Who is a prophet?”

As the Wendland-Cook Program set out to study, Vanderbilt Divinity School has had a long tradition of proactive engagement in movement work across the South and its activist efforts speak to its designation as the “School of the Prophets.” Exploration of this legacy has not only required looking back into the histories and figures that highlight the work of social and religious movement but also inspired renewed conversation about future possibilities for re/defining and expanding the theme “School of the Prophets.” While the aim is not to preassign definitions or propose academic structures in theological education, living into a deep commitment to train prophets in the works of liberation and social justice merits dialogic space to explore, “What describes a prophet?” With this in mind, three questions are proposed for further exploration and ongoing conversation.

1

Who is a prophet?

In a society where structures continue to be stratified and ranked, how are identity markers such as age, race, geopolitical location, religion, language, ancestral lineage, civil status, sexuality, and gender operative in connection to power/lessness and prophetic voice? Considering the plurality of our modern world and high risk of burnout among clergypersons, is the charge of the prophet reserved for one individual or can it expand to include, in the words of Robin Meyers, a “beloved community of resistance”? Assuming that the prophetic charge is entrusted to a beloved community, how might the economic, political, and social structures of society be transformed through a collective mindset and joint strategic efforts? In the context of theological education, whose bodies and voices are included in the beloved community (i.e. students, administrators, faculty, housekeepers)?

2

What does a prophet do?

How is prophetic action understood, defined, and mobilized? What are the guiding frameworks and values that inform prophetic works of justice? Historically, the ongoing struggle for racial justice in the South is recognized by its commitment to nonviolent direct action, protests, and courageous leaders that “speak truth to power.” Presently, as was the case during the time that Martin Luther King Jr. led in the civil rights movement, it is important to consider that speaking truth to power does not exempt persons in ministry or religious contexts that are complicit through silence. In 1963, when King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail he observed:

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama,

Mississippi and all the other southern states. On

sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings

I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches

with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have

beheld the impressive outlines of her

massive religious education buildings.

Over and over I have found myself asking:

“What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?”

If it is believed that prophetic action calls for shifting, growth, and change then the expansion of themes that define mottos – such as “School of the Prophets” – will not be possible in the absence of critical self-examination and analysis of currently operative models. In the spirit of King’s reflective posture, over and over, we must also ask ourselves, “What kind of people worship here?” and “Who is our God?”

3

To where is a prophet called?

In closing, where are today’s modern-day prophets? How do they discern the spaces and places to which they are called? Are they teaching and preaching behind closed doors of religious education buildings and/or “taking their cause and their belief to the streets”* because it is their prophetic act of worship? Where are the voices of lamentation in our time and what are they crying out? Are we listening as they prophesy? Wherever prophets are called the road is not often paved. Holy is the ground that meets their steps and blessed be the vision that guides the movement in their feet.

May those called to bear witness be discerning; may they not be quick to reject and wise to identify their prophets. May their privilege not be such that they find themselves confounded by the spirit of resistance rising up against injustice and oppression. And when our moment comes, may we each find the courage to answer the call:

“Speak up, speak out, get in the way.

Get in good trouble,

necessary trouble,

and help redeem the soul of America.”**

*John Lewis from Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of a Movement (1999).

**John Lewis (1940-2020).

Dr. Arelis Benítez is the Assistant Professor of the Practice of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, and Director of Field Education at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Prior to joining Vanderbilt faculty, she served as an instructor at Loma Linda University School of Religion where she was Director of the Master of Science in Chaplaincy program and the former Lead Chaplain at Loma Linda University Medical Center – Murrieta where she developed a volunteer chaplaincy program.

Wilson Dickinson

12 February 2024

The following is an excerpt from the book Singing the Psalms with My Son: Praying and Parenting for a Healed Planet, a collection of meditations on parenting and climate change. The book works to transform spaces of social reproduction, namely parenting and prayer, to foster alternative communities and collective power—part of the long work of rooting the grassroots. This effort of social gospel education reverses some of the power dynamics often associated with that movement, as it seeks to transform the lives, imaginations, and communities of professional class adults. The wisdom of children and the Psalms are centered to cultivate spaces of creativity, cooperation, celebration, lament, penance, wonder, and hope. This passage is drawn from Chapter 5 on “Showing Right from Wrong.”

Most nights I will select several books from my son’s shelves to read to him. Tonight he has beaten me to it, and is scanning the spines. His books are not a carefully curated collection. Almost all of them are gifts; some given thoughtfully and individually, others handed over to us by the armful.

We have not been entirely careless about what has found its way into this collection. No copy of The Giving Tree will ever rest on these shelves—that myth of perverse self–giving love and male narcissism that sees caring mother nature incarnated as a tree and reduces it to a stump. But there are plenty of his books that make me cringe.

[…]

Tonight he selects Our Two Gardens. I try not to flinch or show disapproval, mostly because such reactions only stoke his interest (a dynamic of prohibition and desire that goes back to that first of gardens). This book, told from the perspective of a young boy, begins by making a distinction between two gardens—the small one which is behind the boy’s house that he shares with his family and a very big garden which is the whole earth, that he shares with everyone, and was planted by God. Following the pattern of the two creation stories in Genesis, the book initially paints pictures of the beautiful biodiversity of God’s big garden, but then it shifts into an on the ground tale of fall and redemption. The main narrative is about a family that moves into a house with a nice garden that falls into disrepair—the apple tree and vegetable beds are depleted, there are bare patches in the grass, plants in the greenhouse and fish in the pond are dying. The family brings back the gardener that used to care for the yard, and she shows them the error of their ways—they were using too much weed killer, failed to pick up their trash, and so on. The gardener shows them both how these problems are taking place on a larger scale in the big garden and shares restorative methods for their backyard.

All in all, the book is not so bad. Still, I find it difficult to read to my son. Part of this is rooted in the book’s concluding moral that offers hope for the “big garden” by imagining that perhaps the leaders of the world will get “embarrassed” and do something. This naivete is consistent throughout the book, as all of the problems of environmental destruction are portrayed as a result of individual actions that are largely based on ignorance rather than on unjust structures that necessitate exploitation and extraction.

Now if you are rolling your eyes at me for critiquing the “naivete” of a children’s book, I will not stop you. This is a professional hazard. I cannot turn off my critical faculties. Maybe you could have a little compassion. Despite such absurdities, I want to persist in this critique for two reasons. First, the book is made painful by the fact that it was published in 1991, just a couple of years after the issue of “global warming” came to public awareness. This moment was a decisive turning point for the future of the planet. The leaders of the earth, in this case, showed no shame and instead followed systemic pressures to intensify all of the issues that were contributing to climate change. Rather than caring for the big garden, in the early 1990s those with power did everything they could to expand their small gardens, privatize everything, and deregulate the meager existing protections. To make matters worse, as Naomi Klein has demonstrated, the mainstream environmental movement signed off on it. The failure in imagination portrayed in Our Two Gardens was one that was widespread and that had planetary consequences.

The second reason I find this difficult to read to my son is that the stories we tell are significant and formative. We are surrounded by narratives that try to show us the path of a good life, that present an account of the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes these stories take place on scales that are cosmic and in ways that are spectacular[…].Most of these stories, however, are embedded in the everyday. This is something that marketers and advertisements have long understood. Ads often do not so much tell stories, as they use pregnant images that appeal to the narratives that have been hammered into our heads throughout our lives. To show an image of a house with a white picket fence, or its renovated equivalent of an open–concept kitchen with stainless steel appliances and a tasteful backsplash, does not require a story. We have already been told the story thousands of times—about how this is a domain of security, success, and self–actualization. Children’s stories, likewise, move through the world of the ordinary; and through repetition, offer paths of meaning and value.

As I reluctantly read my son the book about the two gardens, I wonder how I can tell him a different story—a story that does not take for granted current unjust structures but which points toward another path. I at least have the good sense not to close the book and offer a lecture about the creation stories in scripture and the failures of the environmental movement. But I do hesitate, as I do not fully know how to offer an alternative.

֍֍֍

[…]

Psalm 15 presents an ideal image for us to pray upon and a negative one to avoid….[It is animated by] what Arthur Walker Jones calls an implied story that runs through the [wisdom] Psalms. The wicked are those who are rich, who have gained their wealth and power through deceit, violence, and the exploitation of the poor. The just, by contrast, are those who are honest, peaceful, and generous with the poor and vulnerable. [….] For the wicked, there are only two parties present in their daily lives, the strong and the weak. The just, by contrast, see beyond the struggle between the currently powerful and weak. For the just, relationships with others are triangulated by the presence of God. This is illustrated in their practices of prayer, study, care, and justice. The backdrop of a beautiful and just creation animated by a loving creator transforms the wealthy from being winners, into wicked exploiters that have made a mess of things. The repeated story in the Psalter is that these two characters are caught in a struggle. While it may appear that the wicked have the upper hand, the just must live according to the promises of God.

This story about the difference between right and wrong as they are incarnated in the figures of the just and the wicked stands in stark contrast with many of the stories of winners and losers that dominate our current context.

[…]

Rather than understanding social, economic, and political structures as the playing field within which one wins or loses, Psalm 15 underlines the significance of power dynamics within them. The Psalmist declares that the just are those:

who stand by their oath even to their hurt;

who do not lend money at interest,

and do not take a bribe against the innocent (Ps 15:4b–5).

One is not deemed good by getting ahead, making a profit, or succeeding within things as they are. In fact, living a good life will mean missing out on these spoils—though it need not mean lacking a joyful and shared sufficiency.

[…]

֍֍֍

[…]

As I finish reading the book to my son, I think about how story time has only begun. I will show him the difference between right and wrong not just in what I read to him, but in the stories that I perform throughout my life. […]Yet, if I acknowledge that this longer story time is being staged every day, and displayed in the ways that we work and care for one another, I wonder what kind of a teacher I actually am. When I pray the Psalms that mark the differences between the wicked and the just, I do not find myself neatly on one side of that struggle. The stories and ways of the wicked often guide my actions and sometimes take hold of my heart. The stories enacted in my life are not a carefully curated collection, but some of them are tales that have been thoughtlessly handed on to me and which I continue to incarnate.

As I look to my son, some of these neurotic concerns dissipate as I realize that he too has much to teach me. Perhaps it is in our efforts to care for one another, that we can learn the ways of the just. Nothing of Psalm 15 is about a life lived in independence or that involves standing above others. The poem concludes by promising that, “Those who do these things shall never be moved” (Ps 15:5b). This is because they are grounded and rooted in the presence of God in and through relationships of common life and commonwealth. This too is a story that has been handed on to us, and which we must learn to read and perform together.

Rev. Dr. Wilson Dickinson is a theologian, minister, and organizer whose work takes place at the intersection of environmental justice and discipleship. He is director of the Green Good News and teaches theology and is the Director of the Doctor of Ministry and Continuing Education Programs at Lexington Theological Seminary.