The acrimonious debate about “Mr. Wilson's League” has long been considered a pivotal point in American history. Professor Ruotsila's new book addresses a neglected aspect of that debate: the religious aspect. Because the League was promoted avidly by theological liberals of the day, little attention has been given to dissident religious voices. As a result, historians have overlooked the era during which conservative evangelicals became anti-internationalists, opponents of “political organizations that were secular, invested with worldwide supranational authority, and predicated on multilateralism and the equality of all nations and religiocultural traditions” (3).
Ruotsila has done impressive research, immersing himself in unexplored original source material. He treats matters of faith respectfully with a seriousness not always found among scholars today. He concludes that conservative evangelicals of different stripes came to the same conclusion — that the League of Nations was a bad idea — for a variety of reasons.
The book contains a thoughtful and precise delineation of the doctrinal differences among evangelical groups, which led to an assortment of arguments against the League. Opposition among dispensational pre-millennialists was grounded in biblical prophecy (Ch 2); among confessional Calvinists the issue was the call to cultural dominion (Ch 3); and, among American Lutherans it was a mixing of the secular and the sacred that violated their “Two Kingdoms” doctrine (Ch 4). Ruotsila even explores theological reasons for opposing the League among dissident voices in the Methodist, Episcopalian, and the Restorationist traditions.
For good reason, Ruotsila highlights the role of modernist theology, in the form of the Social Gospel, in promoting the new internationalism that League opponents scorned. But there is a bigger picture. Although the Social Gospel was a source of consternation among evangelicals, they were very apprehensive about a world turned upside down by the recently minted intellectual forces of historicism, positivism, Darwinism, and Marxism. Theological liberalism was just one additional expression of evangelicalism's bête noire, modernism run amuck.
It was during the late 19th-Century that modernity took a turn that gave pause to many Christians. Individuals such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, G. K. Chesterton, and Pope Pius X expressed deep-rooted reservations about the ideological temptations arising from the marriage of Enlightenment rationalism to German historicism, which had unleashed the notion that human reason inevitably would restructure the world, relieving all that ails humanity. Conservative evangelicals also opposed this trend in ways consonant with the theology distinctive of their denominations, thus finding themselves at odds with powerful political forces.
Political progressives, religious liberals, and economic socialists all saw internationalization — and the League — as the proper means to desired ends. Their push for centralization on a global scale ran counter to America's republican tradition and to conservative evangelicalism, both of which maintain a healthy suspicion of centralized power in the hands of imperfect people. Evangelicals, and others, were particularly opposed to what Eric Voegelin later called the “immanentization of the eschaton,” a utopian notion that extraordinary understanding will rectify disorder and create heaven on earth. Among theological liberals, this meant harnessing the power of the state (and the League) to establish a Christian social order, thus “ushering in the Kingdom of God.” For others it meant allying with the “isms” of the day: socialism, progressivism, collectivism, Bolshevism.
The author is less convincing in his concluding claim that “The League of Nations controversy set the parameters for all subsequent conservative evangelical commentary on modern internationalism” (171) — a claim more plausible than proven. Admittedly, vestiges of turn-of-the century thinking can be found in contemporary evangelical circles, but much has transpired since that Ruotsila does not address. Soviet communism, German fascism, Chinese Maoism, Japanese imperialism, and modern terrorism have all caused people to rethink earlier positions. For evangelicals, the 20th century has both hardened and softened their anti-internationalist stances.
While enthusiasm for international political organizations remains tepid, evangelicalism has changed since the days when its international initiatives were limited to world missions. Today, evangelicals are important contributors to efforts to secure human rights around the globe, for example, playing a major role in shaping the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Organizations such as World Vision, World Relief, Samaritan's Purse, International Justice Mission, Voice of the Martyrs, Christian Solidarity International, and Advocates International press for human rights and provide humanitarian aid to dissidents, prisoners, refugees, and the destitute around the world. Evangelicals are addressing prison reform, racial reconciliation, global poverty, third world debt relief, environmental and health crises, and trafficking in women and children.
These developments do not contradict Ruotsila's main point — that conservative evangelicals remain skeptical of internationalist political power — but they may rebut his contention that Christian anti-internationalism is characterized, then and now, by four key notions: (1) a rejection of cooperative endeavors between Christian and non-Christian states; (2) insistence that all efforts to promote peace and prosperity apart from an explicit grounding in Christian truth claims are doomed to fail; (3) the contention that the United States “should remain a separate Christian example to others and, when needed, a unilateral enforcer of right dealing”; and (4) a conviction that only apostates support secular international organizations. These ideas were common during the battle over “Mr. Wilson's League”, but they are much less so today.
