574 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling
By Charles L. Campbell

It appears to me that the world is returning to its second childhood, and running mad for Stories. Stories! Stories! Stories! … Soon it will be necessary that every leading clergyman shall embody his theology in a serial story, to be delivered from the pulpit Sunday after Sunday."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe, My Wife and I, 1872 ¹

Stories are everywhere! Even theologians are telling stories again…. Storytelling and gospel-telling are inextricably wrapped up with one another. -Richard Jensen, Telling the Story, 1980 ²

In the opening chapter of Charles Sheldon's novel In His Steps, Henry Maxwell, the pastor of the First Church of Raymond, is sitting at his desk working on his sermon for Sunday morning. ³ His text is I Peter 2:21, ⁴ and he has completed the first two points of his deductive, threepoint sermon. After a busy week, Maxwell is finally ready to begin point number three, which will develop "in logical order" the steps for following Jesus. However, just as he sets to work, he is interrupted by a shabbily dressed young man who is looking for a job. As a result of this interruption, the reader never gets to hear the logically ordered steps for following Jesus that were to form the third point of Maxwell's sermon. Instead, the novel itself becomes the sermon, "preached" by Sheldon to his readers.

Charles L. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary. He has written widely in the held of homiletics.

¹ Harriet Beecher Stowe, My Wife and I (New York: J. B. Ford and Company, 1872), pp. 1-2. Cited in David S. Reynolds, "From Doctrine to Narrative: The Rise of Pulpit Storytelling in America," American Quarterly 32 (1980), p. 479.
² Richard Jensen, Telling the Story (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1980), pp. 121, 126.
³ Charles M. Sheldon, In His Steps (1897; reprint, New York: A. L. Burt Company, 1936).
⁴ “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps" (NRSV).

575 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

Written in 1897, In His Steps became one of the most popular novels in American history and was influential in the social gospel movement. The novel also presented, however, a challenge to the American pulpit. In place of the logically ordered, neatly divided three point sermon, Sheldon provided a narrative. He told a story that embodied the gospel in everyday life. By replacing the third point of Maxwell's sermon with the novel itself, Sheldon not only confronted complacent upper-middle-class American Protestantism with the social gospel; he also challenged the homiletical practices of the mainline pulpit. ⁵ Further, Sheldon, himself a pastor, undertook this task not only in the novel but in his own pulpit as well. He read the chapters of In His Steps as a kind of serial-story sermon in his church.

In His Steps may be regarded as a paradigmatic piece of popular religious literature in nineteenth-century America. The homiletical thrust of the work, the challenge it presented to the American pulpit, casts light on popular religious novels written earlier in the century, many of them by women such as Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. ⁶ Through their popular novels, these "preachers of the fictional page" ⁷ challenged the logical, abstract preaching of the mainline Protestant pulpit and contributed to the development of pulpit storytell-

"At the heart of the turn to stories in the nineteenth century pulpit lay a widespread dissatisfaction with … abstract, doctrinal preaching … "

ing in the United States. Although many of these novels now sit gathering dust on library shelves, they represent an important part of our homiletical heritage and provide "a not-so-distant mirror" ⁸ within which to examine the turn to pulpit storytelling, which has once again taken place at the end of the twentieth century.

A CRITIQUE OF PULPIT ABSTRACTION

At the heart of the turn to stories in the nineteenth-century pulpit lay a widespread dissatisfaction with the abstract, doctrinal preaching that had dominated the American pulpit since the end of the Puritan era. In 1869,

⁵ In this essay I am focusing on mainline Protestant preaching and homiletics. The picture would took different if I included African-American, frontier, and Catholic preaching.
⁶ There were various kinds of popular religious fiction in the nineteenth century. I am focusing on fiction written out of mainline Protestantism, which is represented in the work of Sheldon, Stowe, Phelps, and Warner. For a discussion of the various types of popular religious fiction, see David S. Reynolds, Faith in Fiction: The Emergence of Religious Literature in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981).
⁷ Mary Kelly, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 294.
⁸ This phrase (also my title) is borrowed from Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballentine Books, 1978).

576 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

Sara Parton ("Fanny Fern"), a popular columnist, published an essay, "Notes Upon Preachers and Preaching," which captured this dissatisfaction in a colorful way:

When I go to church I want to carry something back with me wherewithal to fight the devil through the week. I don't want the ancestry of Jereboam and Ezekiel and Keranhappuck raked up and commented on; or any other fossil dodge, to cover up the speaker's barrenness of head or heart. I want something for today-for over-burdened men and women in this year of our Lord 1869. Something live and something that has bearing on our daily work; something that recognizes the seething elements about us, and their bearing on the questions of conscience and duty we are hourly called on to settle…. Oh, if the clergymen would only study their fellow men more. If they would less often try to unravel some double-twisted theological knot, which, if pulled out straight, would never carry one drop of balm to a suffering fellow being, or teach him how to bear bravely and patiently the trials, under which soul and body are ready to faint. If, looking into some yearning face before them on a Sunday, they would preach to its wistful asking for spiritual help, in words easy to understand-in heart-tones not to be mistaken-how different would Sundays seem, to many women, at least, whose heart-aches and unshared burdens, none but their Maker knows. ⁹

Parton's contemporary-sounding essay expressed many people's frustrations with the preaching in orthodox Protestant churches. Her concerns were shared and addressed by many popular novelists of the nineteenth century, who sought to do exactly what Parton wished the "clergymen" would do. Avoiding "double-twisted theological knots," these novelists addressed their reader's heartaches and consciences in "words easy to understand" and "heart-tones not to be mistaken." Some of the authors, such as Sheldon in In His Steps and Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin, addressed social concerns. Others, such as Susan Warner in The Wide Wide World , sought to provide edification amidst the hardships and struggles of daily life. ¹⁰ Other writers addressed the troubled hearts of their hearers, as did Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in The Gates Ajar, which spoke to grieving families following the Civil War. ¹¹ However, whatever the function of the novels, the vehicle was the same: stories. Stories

⁹ Fanny Fern, "Notes Upon Preachers and Preaching," in Folly as It Flies (New York: G.W. Carleton and Co., 1869), pp. 88-90.
¹⁰ Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World (New York: Feminist Press, 1987).
¹¹ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Gates Ajar, edited by Helen Sootin Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1964). The popularity of Stowe's novels is well known. However, twentieth-century readers are less familiar with the works of Warner and Phelps, which enjoyed enormous popularity and critical acclaim in their day. Warner's novel, The Wide, Wide World, first published in 1850, created an unprecedented explosion in the marketplace. Going through fourteen editions in two years, the book sold more copies than any previous this country and England. Phelps's The Gates Ajar met with similar success. Originally published in 1868, the book went through fifty-five printings by 1884. It was one of the most School" of fiction, which featured earthly depictions of the heavenly life.

577 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

offered the means for engaging and moving people and for relating the gospel to everyday life. ¹²

In many of these novels, the critique of the American pulpit was explicit. In In His Steps Sheldon, as we have observed, directly replaced the third, logical point of Henry Maxwell's sermon with a story. Other

" ...the roots of pulpit storytelling lie in the nineteenth century, specifically in the popular religious fiction of that era. "

writers similarly sought to provide an alternative to the traditional style of preaching. In The Gates Ajar, for example, the central character, Mary, is grieving the death of her brother, Roy, in the Civil War. However, from the pulpit of her pastor, appropriately named Dr. Bland, Mary receives no good news. In her diary, Mary offers a comical commentary on contemporary preaching, tracing Dr. Bland's sermon on "the future state" through division after division and enlargement after enlargement. ¹³ Finally, Mary concludes:

Going (to church] hungry, hopeless, blinded, I came back empty, uncomforted, groping. I wanted something actual, something pleasant, about this place into which Roy has gone. He gave me glittering generalities, cold commonplace, vagueness, unreality, a God and a future at which I sat and shivered.

Dr. Bland is a good man. He had, I know, written that sermon with prayer. I only wish he could be made to see how it glides over and sails splendidly away from wants like mine. ¹⁴

In the course of the novel, Mary's Aunt Winifred becomes the real preacher, offering good news even to Dr. Bland himself when he becomes inconsolable at his wife's death. (His years of preaching have left him empty in his time of need.) At the end of the novel, Bland throws his abstract, didactic sermon on the future life into the fireplace and changes his style of preaching. At the heart of The Gates Ajar lies a critique of nineteenth-century sermons. Through her novel, Phelps sought to fill the void left by the logical abstractions of the American pulpit and to speak a word of hope. At the same time, she was calling the clergy to a new kind of preaching.

In novel after novel, one finds a similar critique of the pulpit along with the substitution of stories for abstract doctrinal discussions. Harriet Beecher Stowe epitomized this critique in a comment about the theologian and preacher, Samuel Hopkins, in her historical novel, The Minister's Wooing: "The only mistake made by the good man was that of supposing

¹² Many of the writers of popular fiction understood themselves as being engaged in a kind of preaching. See Kelly, Private Woman, pp. 293-295.
¹³ Phelps, Gates Ajar, pp. 48-51.
¹⁴ Ibid., p. 51.

578 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

that the elaboration of theology was preaching the gospel." ¹⁵ Through their novels the popular writers sought to replace such "elaboration of theology" with a new form of preaching.

Moreover, the popular novelists appear to have accomplished exactly what they set out to do. As early as 1866, Henry Tuckerman noted the role of popular fiction in "spreading the gospel":

In the pages of journals, in the verses of poets, in the favorite books of the hour, we have homilies that teach charity and faith more eloquently than the conventional Sunday discourse; they come nearer to experience; they are more the offspring of earnest conviction, and therefore enlist popular sympathy. ¹⁶

Similarly, though more pejoratively, Mark Twain noted in 1871 that the gospel of Christ came "filtered down" to nineteenth-century Americans "through the despised novel … and NOT from the drowsy pulpit." ¹⁷

A SHIFT TOWARD STORYTELLING

In addition, these novels eventually came to have a significant impact on preaching in the United States, as David Reynolds has demonstrated. ¹⁸ Challenged by the popularity of this fiction, pulpit oratory in this period shifted from the exposition of abstract doctrines to the telling of lively and edifying stories. ¹⁹ Pious narratives and anecdotes replaced the older logical form in an increasing number of sermons. Henry Ward Beecher, for example, became well-known for his use of stories in the pulpit and even included many anecdotes in his Yale Lectures on Preaching. ²⁰ Critical of theological abstractions in the pulpit, Beecher defended the edifying value of stories over the discussion of intricate details of doctrine . ²¹ Other popular preachers of the day, such as T. DeWitt Talmage and Dwight Moody, likewise made increasing use of stories in their sermons. ²² The well-known preacher, Phillips Brooks, highlighted this trend in his Lectures on Preaching in 1877. He approvingly recognized that the "competition of print has interfered very much … with the monotonous reitera-

¹⁵ Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister's Wooing (1859; reprint, Hartford, Connecticut: The Stowe-Day Foundation, 1988), p. 90.
¹⁶ Cited in Reynolds, Faith in Fiction, p. 209.
¹⁷ Cited in Reynolds, Faith in Fiction, p. 1,
¹⁸ Reynolds, "Doctrine to Narrative" and Faith in Fiction. The situation was certainly more complex than I am suggesting here. Some novels included doctrinal discussions; stories were used in American pulpits before the nineteenth century; popular fiction was not the only influence in the development pulpit storytelling; and not every preacher turned to stories in the pulpit. Reynolds provides a helpful treatment of this complexity. However, the general trend toward storytelling is clear, as is the significant role that popular fiction played in this development.
¹⁹ Reynolds, "Doctrine to Narrative," p. 480.
²⁰ Henry Ward Beecher, Yale Lectures on Preaching, Three Vols. (New York: Fords, Howard, and Hulbert, 1892). Beecher also wrote a religious novel, Norwood, which, however, did not enjoy the success of his sister's works.
²¹ Ibid., Vol. III, p. 306.
²² Reynolds, "Doctrine to Narrative," pp. 494-497.

579 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

tion of commonplaces and abstractions" in the pulpit. ²³ And he noted that the "statement of the subject, the divisions into heads, the recapitulation at the end, all the scaffolding and anatomy of a sermon is out of favor and there are many good jests about it." ²⁴ Reynolds summarizes the homiletical developments:

Stowe's dream of universal pulpit storytelling never reached fruition, and yet an increasing number of nineteenth-century American preachers and homiletic theorists did combine their abandonment of strict Calvinist doctrine with an adoption of many of the same devices that were contributing to the popularity of religious fiction. ²⁵

Despite claims for the "newness" of the current turn to stories in the American pulpit, the roots of pulpit storytelling in the United States lie in the nineteenth century, specifically in the popular religious fiction of that era. Over one hundred years ago storytelling was being offered as an alternative to the didactic, abstract preaching of the American pulpit. Sounding much like contemporary "narrative homileticians," nineteenthcentury novelists defended storytelling as a method for bringing the gospel into touch with life and moving people's hearts (not just their minds) to faithfulness. Although the reflection on narrative has become more sophisticated today, most of the reasons given for the current turn to pulpit storytelling were already presented over one hundred years ago.

However, while the turn to storytelling unquestionably brought important gains to the pulpit, there was also a significant loss; a large price was paid, which contemporary preachers and theologians ought to consider. The turn to storytelling in the nineteenth century brought with it a rift between preaching and theology. As is evident from the preceding discussion, the turn to storytelling was built on the foundation of an antagonism toward serious theological reflection in the pulpit. The defense of storytelling virtually required the rejection of the homiletical value of intellectual doctrine. Of course, there were good reasons for challenging the current theological abstractions in the pulpit; they seemed to be divorced from the life of faith, the piety of the people, and the suffering of the world. However, cut off from serious theological reflection, the popular stories often became little more than affirmations of human experience and simple morality. And they often accommodated themselves to the whims of popular culture. ²⁶

This rift between theology and the popular pulpit was encouraged and exacerbated by significant cultural forces. Secularization, liberalization, and the increasing pluralism of American Christianity had created a serious crisis for the church. The turn to stories in the pulpit was one response-and perhaps a necessary one-to this crisis. ²⁷ Stories provided

²³ Phillips Brooks, On Preaching (New York: Seabury Press, 1964), p. 12.
²⁴ Ibid., pp. 177-178.
²⁵ Reynolds, "Doctrine to Narrative," p. 480.
²⁶ Reynolds, Faith in Fiction, pp. 71-72.
²⁷ Ibid.

580 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

a way to present the Christian faith while avoiding detailed discussions of doctrine, which had been undetermined by formidable cultural trends. ²⁸ Storytelling became a way of sustaining faith amidst "the ruins of metaphysical theology," as Reynolds points out:

The subversion of intellectual doctrine through fictional techniques was accompanied by a turning away from tangled metaphysical questions and an embrace of such real aspects of experience as nature, human feeling, and vernacular perspective. In a century when revealed religion was subject to sharp attack, common experience provided diversion and solace for those who feared that the logical religious approaches of the past might lead to self-criticism and even to skepticism. ²⁹

Somewhat more sympathetically, Helen Sootin Smith has made a similar point in regard to Phelps's novel, The Gates Ajar. The novel, Smith argues, addressed….

… the spiritual disquiet created by the advance of science and the erosion of traditional Christianity…. The book was a bridge between the high citadel of Calvinist orthodoxy and the most inarticulate uncertainties of popular faith, and while it was constructed of materials that could not endure, for a time it enabled its audience to maintain a viable Christianity. ³⁰

As a response to the theological crisis facing the church, pulpit storytelling did not engage in creative conversation with doctrinal theology but replaced it. Preaching and theology were set at odds.

PULPIT STORYTELLING TODAY

The disturbing thing is how familiar this scenario sounds today. The current turn to storytelling has taken place in a similar theological context to that in which pulpit storytelling arose at the end of the nineteenth century. Once again, the church is faced with the challenges of secularization and pluralism. Once again, Christians are faced with the collapse of any broad theological consensus. Once again, the church faces serious theological and intellectual challenges. And once again, the American pulpit has become enamored with storytelling. ³¹ From the perspective of the nineteenth century, the current turn to storytelling may be seen as a predictable response to a theological crisis facing the church.

Unfortunately, as in the nineteenth century, the contemporary trend toward pulpit storytelling also reflects a rift between serious theological

²⁸ Ibid. Today narrative theologians have discredited the notion that the only kind of "rigorous" theology is abstract and systematic. And, of course, stories can be theologically very rich and profound. Reynold's distinction between storytelling and "rigorous" theology can be misconstrued. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century the rift between theology and preaching became very real.
²⁹ Ibid., pp. 49,197.
³⁰ Helen Sootin Smith, "Introduction," in Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, The Gates Ajar, p. vi.
³¹ One could also add that preaching is once again challenged by a popular communications medium, television. In what follows, I am not referring to "narrative homiletics" in general, which covers a wide variety of approaches to narrative. Rather, I have in mind the specific form of storytelling and the kinds of anecdotal sermons that have become widespread in contemporary preaching.

581 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

reflection and preaching. Pulpit storytellers may have good reasons for turning away from current academic theology, which is often preoccupied with esoteric concerns and abstract methodologies that seem at best remotely related to the church. But to what have they turned? For the past twenty years, the field of homiletics has been preoccupied with matters of form, giving little attention to the question of theological content. And the turn to storytelling has been a part of this development. While bringing with it many gains, such storytelling nevertheless has too often provided a way for preachers to avoid the profound theological challenges before the church. It has given preachers a way to avoid making risky claims from the pulpit. Such storytelling has too frequently reduced Christianity to a matter of individual feelings, or "experiential events," divorced from the larger communal beliefs and practices of the church. A pastor once summed up this development: "I -reached a 'totally evocative sermon today. I said almost nothing." While safe for the preacher, such preaching does not hold much promise for the church.

"...the contemporary trend toward pulpit storytelling … reflects a rift between serious theological reflection and preaching. "

Recently some diverse voices among contemporary homileticians have begun to decry the absence of serious theological reflection in the field. In a paper presented to the Academy of Homiletics, Ronald Allen wrote, "Preaching is preeminently a theological act. Yet there is a near lacuna in our literature: we give little attention to theological analysis of the preaching event ." ³² From a very different perspective, Christine Smith has criticized the lack of substance in contemporary homiletical thought: "Many of the scholars in the field offer various critiques of the preaching task in its present form. These critiques, however, offer little new visionary thought about the content and life-changing dimension of preaching. " ³³ More recently, Thomas Long has called for a return to the teaching function of preaching as a supplement to the dominant emphasis on "delight. " ³⁴ And in his current book, A Captive Voice, David Buttrick has predicted that "homiletics and theology will come together again."

³² Ronald Allen, "Agendae in Homiletics," Papers of the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Homiletics, Fuller Theological Seminary, December 5-7,1991, p. 35. An abbreviated version of this paper was published as "New Directions in Homiletics," Journal for Preachers 16 (Easter, 1993), pp. 20-26.
³³ Christine M. Smith, Weaving the Sermon: Preaching in a Feminist Perspective (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), p. 107.
³⁴ Thomas G. Long, "When the Preacher is a Teacher," Journal for Preachers 16 (1993), pp. 21-27. Long draws on Augustine's understanding of preaching as teaching, delighting, and persuading.

582 - A Not-So-Distant Mirror: Nineteenth Century Popular Fiction and Pulpit Storytelling

"If we are ministers of meaning," he writes, "then we had better learn to think theologically. " ³⁵

The larger historical perspective suggests that, despite the ascendancy of storytelling today, the Christian pulpit cannot rely exclusively on such preaching for too long. Rather, we can expect the pendulum to swing again as Christians inevitably demand the serious theological reflection-the hard intellectual work-required to deal with the challenges facing the contemporary church. Stanley Hauerwas may have expressed the future concerns of people in the pews when he wrote, "After the initial enthusiasm for the rediscovery of the significance of stories, one begins to feel the need for some good, old-fashioned arguments that are scholastic in form . ³⁶ The numerous voices calling for a return to theological reflection in homiletics suggest that the pendulum is already beginning to swing back.

Nevertheless, as we anticipate a return to theology in homiletics, we will need to heed the challenges of those nineteenth-century novelists. The novelists remind us that "homiletical theology" at least must remain in contact with the life of faith, the piety of the church, and the suffering of the world. Doctrinal abstractions and academic methodologies will be no more adequate than isolated storytelling. Rather, somewhere in the dialogue between those two poles, new theologies for preaching will be born.

³⁵ David Buttrick, A Captive Voice: The Liberation of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/ John Knox Press, 1994), p. 110.
³⁶ Stanley Hauerwas, "The Church as God's New Language," in Christian Existence Today (Durham, North Carolina: Labyrinth Press, 1988), p. 55. For a discussion of the absence of theological reflection in the church and the possible hunger of parishioners for it, see William Placher, "Why Bother With Theology?" The Christian Century (February 2-9, 1994), pp. 104-108. Today, theologians who have reflected on narrative in careful, nuanced ways, such as Hauerwas, Hans Frei, James William McClendon, and Johann Baptist Metz, may be important resources for developing new theologies for preaching.