The Progressive Movement: The Early Twentieth Century

The early century referred to as the progressive movement/ era which was a time when responses were applied to economic and social problems. Progressivism began as a social movement and grew into political movement. Religion is a word that almost defies any consensual definition. Most people reflect some of their own religious beliefs, or at least those of their own culture, in defining religion. The Semitic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) tend to make belief in a god or gods essential to being religious. Those from the great Eastern religions (Buddhism and Hinduism) often make the quest for enlightenment essential, not theism, since early Buddhism was nontheistic. Those familiar with African religions may key their definition

to ecstatic types of experience. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry with all these options when writing about religion in Tennessee, at least since European penetration into the area that became Tennessee. The Judaic-Christian tradition has been completely dominant. An essay on religion in Tennessee has to be an essay largely about Christian churches and a very few Jewish congregations and the more recent arrivals of the followers of Islam, Hindu, and Buddhism (Conkin, Paul K).
Before 1900 the largest religious groups in Tennessee were the Methodists, Baptists and Christian (Disciples of Christ) churches (Tennessee Church). Other smaller denominations also followed.
The earliest recognized Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) church in Tennessee is Capers Memorial CME Church in Nashville its leaders had a prominent role in the creation of the formal CME convention in 1870. In that year Capers members along with about forty black Methodists in West Tennessee broke from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and formed an independent denomination more reflective of issues central to the black community. Methodists is a group of historically related denominations of protestant Christianity which derive their inspiration from the life and teachings of john Wesley (1703-1791). Methodism originated as a revival within the 18th century church following Wesley’s death. The Methodists church is a worldwide organization consisting of more than 20,000,000 followers with more than 14,000,000 in North America. They arrived eastern Tennessee in 1786 via circuit riders which was a form of transportation to churches in different cities by way of horse riding. In 1786 this was also the year that the first congregation was built in what is present day Carter County. In 1787 Benjamin Ogden, was appointed to be the circuit preacher of Cumberland settlement. Circuit riders were sent out during harvest time which was an effort to reach out to the community to try and influence a growing relationship with and In Christ Jesus. The first Methodist church built in Nashville was in 1789 or 1790. A stone building and stood somewhere where the town square now is. It did not stand long with the town increasing it was moved. The first Methodist church was four miles north of Nashville on white’s creek, near the house of Absalom Hooper and called it Hooper’s chapel. The Methodist congregation would end up relocating 3 times before finding a home.
Benjamin Ogden a 22 year old revolutionary war veteran, the first western cavalier, his name synonymous to courage and suffering. In 1787 reverend Benjamin was appointed by the Baltimore conference to be the circuit preacher of the Cumberland settlement and 3 other counties. That same year rev Ogden reported receiving ninety members into the church. Since then the people and pastors of what is now mckendree united Methodist church have made a Christian witness in downtown Nashville.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, Baptists had begun to settle the mountain valleys of what is now East Tennessee, and by 1786 their small churches were numerous enough to establish what became the second Baptist association, west of the Alleghenies, the Holston Valley Association. However, these early Tennessee Baptists brought with them a doctrinal division that had flourished before and after the Great Awakening. "Regular Baptists" held an allegiance to the Philadelphia Association (established in 1707) and to that organization's creed, the Philadelphia Confession (adopted in 1742 as a heavily Calvinistic, limited atonement document). "Separate Baptists" had become non-creedal, Arminian, general atonement Baptists. Although most of the larger Baptist churches of Tennessee now are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, there still are regular and separate congregations within the state, preserving many of their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century traditions (Dorgan Howard).
The two largest Protestant confessions in America (Methodists and Baptists) have both retained a special tie to Tennessee. After both the main Baptist and Methodist denominations split over the issue of slavery, the southern branches created their own denominational agencies. The Methodists led the way, and through the generosity of a former Methodist circuit preacher who had gained considerable wealth, the Methodist Episcopal Church South located its publishing house in Nashville. Soon its bishops met there, and other boards and agencies located in Nashville, making it the capital of southern Methodism. By the end of the nineteenth century, one could identify deep tensions within these older, evangelical denominations. To an extent, a majority of southern Methodists and Presbyterians and a minority of Baptists relaxed some of the earlier moral rigor, became more inclusive in membership requirements, transformed the rebirth experience in something closer to confirmation, changed the former revivals and camps into milder forms of education, and variously reinterpreted central doctrines or relaxed an inflexible biblicalism. In the early twentieth century, a rapidly growing Pentecostal movement that added to the older Evangelicalism a new emphasis upon charismatic gifts (prophecy and healing), with speaking in tongues elevated to a key position as a necessary witness to spiritual baptism. In all these changes, Tennessee once again occupied a central position, one much more important in the history of Christianity than its antievolution legislation or the famous Scopes trial at Dayton in 1925.
American fundamentalism and the social gospel are two distinct religious movements both began in the early part of the 20th century.

Both sprang from Christianity’s attempt to deal with modern problems although with different goals. The social gospel grew out of the abuses of industrialism. By the turn of the twentieth century, American cities had become magnets for cheap labor. Poverty was on an all-time high reflecting hopelessness, some of the rich were philanthropists, but others justified their cruelty with a philosophy called social Darwinism; if evolution favors the survival of the fittest, they argued, then why should the strong help the weak to survive?. The social gospel arose to combat this bleak landscape. Many Christians came to believe than humans could really build the kingdom of God on earth. William Jennings Bryan carried this idea into his three presidential campaigns. To counter the argument, he compared society to a garden saying you can’t let weeds triumph over the roses because they are stronger. Instead you protect the roses from the weeds. Therefore if you want a society with good people some weeding would be needed. Fundamentalism arose from a radically different way than the social gospel. Early in the 20th century, certain significant Christians began to see the bible as a historical text, rather than a revealed truth. They believed the bible had evolved over time and simply reflected the views of the men who wrote it. In the beginning, fundamentalism did not attempt to reach out and change society as a whole. It was the anti-evolution crusade of William Jennings Bryan that turned fundamentalism into a political movement

(Pbs).
From its founding, to the present day Tennessee has been active site for religious movements. Because of its place on the western frontier, the state featured prominently in the revivals and camp meetings associated with the second great awakening and the rise of evangelism. During the first part of twentieth century, Nashville became a central location for religious publishing. As a part of the Bible belt. Tennessee remains a hotbed of religious activity, publishing and change.