Near the beginning of his classic depression-era novel, The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck introduces the Reverend Jim Casy, a “Burning Busher” who “used to . . . get the people jumpin' an' talking' in tongues, an' glory-shoutin' till they just fell down and passed out.” But now Casy has given up preaching. “The sperit ain't in the people much no more;” Casy tells his friend Tom Joad, “and worse'n that, the sperit ain't in me no more.” Throughout the novel, Steinbeck underscores the crisis of religious meaning in the face of financial catastrophes confronting families like the Joads—share croppers and over-extended farmers who were forced off their land in dustbowl states such as Oklahoma, traveled west seeking work and better wages in California, only to find themselves struggling to stave off starvation, disease, and despair in crowded makeshift or government camps where they encountered sharp-tongued, fire-baptized believers like Steinbeck's character Lisbeth Sandry, a “deep-down Jesus-lover” who accused them of wickedness and warned that God was watching and smoking out sinners who took pleasure in play acting, devil-dancing, and other “hell-burning” behaviors.Footnote ¹

Like Steinbeck, scholars of American religion have generally highlighted the spiritual crises that accompanied the global economic collapse of the 1930s. In his 1959 presidential address before the American Society of Church History, Robert Handy argued that American Protestantism suffered from a “religious depression” from 1925 to 1935 which rendered most major denominations “unable to deal with the needs of the time in a fresh and creative way.”Footnote ² Historian Robert Moats Miller noted that many religious periodicals ignored “such unhappy facts of bank failures and unemployment” well into the 1930s. Rather than wrestling with realities of financial breakdown and recommending remedies to cure its causes and consequences, Miller contended, “many Protestant churchman adopted what might be called a Christian Scientist approach to the economic sickness of the country,” hoping that “if the symptoms were overlooked the disease would pass away.”Footnote ³

Curiously, many scholars have also disregarded the Great Depression in their narratives of American religious history. Since the late 1950s, when Handy and Miller published their analyses, only a handful of historians have paid sustained attention to the religious dimensions of the financial disaster that affected so many people of faith during the 1930s. This silence is especially notable in scholarship on what Handy calls “sectarian movements”—the “newer and smaller religious groups” that attracted those disillusioned with older Protestant denominations and the economically or socially “disinherited.”Footnote ⁴ With the exception of Joel Carpenter's now-classic (1980) essay on the vitality and growth of fundamentalism in the decade between the 1929 stock market crash and United States' entrance into World War II, most studies of American evangelicalism skip from the Scopes Trial of 1925 to the revivals of Billy Graham and the emergence of neo-evangelicalism in the late 1940s. Scholarship on pentecostal responses to the economic crisis of the 1930s is also relatively scarce.Footnote ⁵

This essay contributes to the study of American religion during the Great Depression by exploring the effects of economic crisis on pentecostal theology and missionary practice. Both Handy and Carpenter have maintained that the collapse of financial markets helped hasten major transitions in American Protestant missionary programs. As historic churches lost confidence in the project of converting the heathen to Christianity, “faith missions” funded by evangelical groups—including enterprises sponsored by pentecostal organizations like the Assemblies of God—expanded. Examining how pentecostals promoted increased missionary outreach amidst devastating economic distress offers insight into how “spirit-filled” believers made theological sense of financial calamity and its catastrophic consequences both at home and abroad.

By attending to the missionary aspirations that shaped spirit-filled Christianity during the depression era, I aim to amend what historian Augustus Cerillo calls the “popular hayseed image of Pentecostalism” and to supplement the conclusions of observers like John Steinbeck, who portrayed pentecostals either as mean-spirited and small-minded villains or, in Grant Wacker's words, as “hapless victims of economic collapse” bereft of adequate theological resources for addressing the social or spiritual dislocations so many were experiencing.Footnote ⁶ Embracing a global outlook, I propose, provided some proponents of the “full gospel” with a broader frame for interpreting their own struggles in light of the burdens their brothers and sisters around the world were bearing. By contributing to missionary causes, including many that linked evangelism with educational programs, preaching with poverty relief, sermons with service to widows and orphans, participants in the pentecostal movement engaged in efforts to assuage both spiritual and physical suffering on a wide scale, and in surprisingly holistic ways.

I. Prophets of Impending Doom

Before defending the proposition that depression-era pentecostals were more cosmopolitan than previous interpreters have recognized, I want to affirm the accuracy of conventional perceptions about their penchant for prophetic and other-worldly perspectives on the pain and perplexities resulting from financial hardship.Footnote ⁷ During the 1930s, popular pentecostal periodicals such as The Latter Rain Evangel, The Glad Tidings Herald, and The Pentecostal Evangel—the official organ of the influential Assemblies of God—were replete with articles linking the current economic crisis with spiritual decay and cosmic catastrophe. “Degenerated humanity” was responsible for the misfortunes of “this prodigal age,” one writer pronounced. Alongside “the banker, the bootlegger, the politician, and the racketeer” who were “rolling in gold obtained through greed,” the guilty included “the so-called clergy of modern criticism,” the cigarette-smoking pleasure-seekers, the Jazz singers and the “Hollywood Jaugernauts.” Eventually sin had its consequences: “The board of trade crashed. The country staggered under a misspent fortune. Smash! Bang!! The bottom fell out of everything.”Footnote ⁸ The depression, in this view, was a deserved judgment on an apostate age.

While the “wicked” struggled to discern the causes of the “tremendous convulsions and crashes . . . in the financial world,” the “righteous” could easily make sense of the “staggering realities” of unemployment, crime, and industrial upheaval in biblical terms.Footnote ⁹ “Nineteen hundred years ago, holy men foretold just such events as are now transpiring, to be fulfilled in the ‘end’ time,” wrote Latter Rain Evangel editor Anna Reiff in January of 1931. “Are we surprised that the prophecies are coming to pass?” she asked.Footnote ¹⁰ By interpreting the current economic crisis “in light of scripture,” Reiff explained, the “true child of God” also recognized what “men of finance and affairs” failed to understand: that “there is no human remedy for present conditions.”Footnote ¹¹

Pastor Bert Williams echoed this sentiment in a 1932 sermon titled “The Cure for Depression.” After surveying various proposals for restoring financial prosperity—including recommendations to promote spending or saving, to repeal the prohibition amendment, to reform banking laws, and to buy American products—Williams concluded that none of these political or economic prescriptions would heal “this terrible world sickness,” which was really religious in nature. “A pick-up in business will not improve the moral and spiritual condition of our country,” he asserted. In fact, not even a “great religious revival” could fully restore the nation to health. “We are doomed,” Williams declared. “Sin has become an integral part of the average life,” and “if we rightly understand the teachings of scripture and the signs of the times, the moral and spiritual conditions of the world will grow steadily worse.”Footnote ¹² Given this prognosis, Williams determined that only the Second Coming could cure the Great Depression. “What can we do to arrest the downward current?” Chicago preacher Nathan Beskin asked. “Nothing! It is too late to patch up this old world. . . . Our duty . . . is to get men ready for the next age . . . where there will be no corruption, no crooked politicians, no financial depressions.”Footnote ¹³ For these pentecostals, the global economic downturn of the 1930s was not a problem to be solved but a fulfillment of prophecy to be endured with patient hope until Christ's return.

II. “Depression without the DE and I spells PRESS ON!”

Prophets of impending doom were not the only pentecostals publishing interpretations of the Great Depression in popular periodicals during the 1930s. Alongside articles preaching a pre-millennial message that discouraged readers from harboring hope of economic recovery this side of heaven were sermons that spoke in a different spirit. Rather than assuming that the global financial downturn signaled the inevitable decline of civilization before the Second Coming, some authors saw monetary misfortunes as blessings sent by God to prompt repentance, revival, and reform.

Like their more pessimistic peers, pentecostals who put a positive spin on economic hardship turned to the Bible for inspiration. For this group of interpreters, however, apocalyptic passages were not primary. Instead they found encouragement in the parables, psalms, and prophecies that promised restoration and grace for God's people who turned from their sinful ways and sought forgiveness. The return of the prodigal son provided hope and a plan of action for penitents who found themselves destitute and in debt.Footnote ¹⁴ Psalms of lament and praise also offered solace. Based on his exegesis of Psalm 107:39, which reads “Again they are diminished and brought low,” an editor of the Pentecostal Evangel explained that financial losses were manifestations of God's mercy. “It is the kindness of the Lord to take away the riches of some, because He knows they are inclined to trust in them,” he wrote in January of 1934. “I know this from experience, for after a time of great financial prosperity He brought me down to a place where I did not have a penny in the world, and then He began to prove to me what a faithful Provider He is.” Turning to Psalm 34, he exhorted his readers to have confidence in God's promises to care for “His own. He says to us, ‘Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’”Footnote ¹⁵ Evangelist Edith Mae Pennington drew on the proclamations of the prophet Isaiah to make a similar plea at a 1932 Interstate Camp Meeting in Eureka, Arkansas. “We are going through a financial depression,” she acknowledged. “Just why are we going through this? I believe . . . when God's judgments are in the land the people will learn righteousness.” During times of prosperity, she observed, people were apt to forget God, but “now they are turning their attention toward spiritual things.” The proper response for those suffering hardship was confidence in God's provision: “God has promised to take care of those who put their trust in Him,” she proclaimed.Footnote ¹⁶

What did it mean to “trust in the Lord and do good” within the context of a worldwide economic crisis? About this, pentecostals like Pennington were quite clear: it meant bringing one's pocketbook to church and giving faithfully to the missionary cause even when money was short. Not only was systematic tithing a scriptural command, it was spiritually and financially savvy.Footnote ¹⁷ “More and more we are being made to realize that there is no greater investment than the mission fields,” one author affirmed in 1932. “Many a Christian today who has seen his savings swept away, can truly say, ‘All is gone except what I gave to the Lord.’ As the shadows deepen and men's hearts are failing them because they are suddenly plunged from affluence to poverty . . . let us heed anew the command of our blessed Master: ‘Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.’”Footnote ¹⁸

According to many missionary advocates, “the present financial crisis” afforded a unique and “splendid opportunity” to prove God's faithfulness.Footnote ¹⁹ In May of 1932, Assemblies of God Missionary Secretary Noel Perkin challenged his constituents to resist retrenchment in the face of budgetary shortages, and instead to “press forward to take fresh territory for God.” From “a natural standpoint,” he admitted, the situation seemed grim. “We may argue that we have insufficient funds, that our people are out of work, and that our constituency is poor,” he averred, “but let us not forget that God is not affected by the depression. His resources are unchanged and unlimited. Let us . . . shout the victory in the face of the Red Sea of Depression that would seem to hinder our progress. God . . . can make a way where there seems to be none.”Footnote ²⁰

Exhortations to trust God in the midst of economic scarcity often came from missionaries who knew firsthand what it meant to suffer the pains of financial uncertainty and privation. Like all who adopted the “faith principle of financing,” pentecostal missionaries went overseas without a guaranteed salary.Footnote ²¹ Although the Assemblies of God modified this system somewhat by providing a basic allowance, missionaries were still required to trust God for provision of their daily bread. Because they sought to carry the gospel into previously un-evangelized regions, pentecostal missionaries often worked among impoverished people who had little access to education or health care, and few opportunities for economic or social advancement. As a result, many spirit-filled missionaries found themselves combining proselytizing with efforts to provide basic literacy, relief from physical affliction, and industrial training. Orphanages and rescue homes for women were also a prominent feature of pentecostal missions programs. All of these enterprises required funding, and missionaries frequently struggled to obtain the means to support their work. Episodes of famine, drought, and political upheaval exacerbated the difficulties. Nevertheless, spirit-filled missionaries always maintained that God was a faithful provider. Testimonies of “the Lord's miraculous provision” in answer to prayer were a staple feature of pentecostal periodical literature and missionary newsletters from the movement's earliest days.Footnote ²²

By the time of stock market crash in 1929, then, spirit-filled believers in North America were well-acquainted with the realities of poverty and disease, deprivation and oppression, that plagued their fellow human beings in India, China, Africa, and elsewhere. They were also accustomed to appeals that affirmed God's care for the downtrodden and God's faithfulness in the midst of financial disaster and its calamitous consequences. When economic collapse enveloped the United States, pentecostal leaders and missionaries encouraged their constituents to place their own distress within these broader contexts—to remember the sufferings of their brothers and sisters abroad and to “rise to the challenge” the present crisis presented by continuing to give generously. “Let us never forget the Scripture which says, ‘He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,” the Reverend Robert Brown urged.Footnote ²³ Evangelist William Booth-Clibborn agreed: “Depression without the DE and I spells PRESS ON!”Footnote ²⁴

III. The Tale the Totals Told

Throughout the 1930s, pentecostals did press on in propagating spirit-filled faith in foreign lands. During the early years of the economic downturn, in fact, missionary giving actually expanded exponentially. Just prior to the great crash of 1929, the Assemblies of God reported a steady increase in offerings “notwithstanding the financial depression in many localities.”Footnote ²⁵ Moneys for missions received over the prior two years amounted to “considerabl[y] more than a half million dollars,” a figure that represented “the largest increase of any period” in the organization's history.Footnote ²⁶ The pecuniary picture was still looking relatively rosy in 1931: contributions for missions had continued to grow, although at a more modest pace. Rejoicing that Assemblies’ receipts were expanding at a time when “practically every other missions society has suffered because of financial conditions,” the officers of the association suggested that their comparative gains signified God's blessing on a spiritually advanced movement.Footnote ²⁷

By 1933, however, these pentecostal leaders were forced to temper their triumphalism. “For the first time in many years,” Noel Perkin reported, “we are obliged to show a decrease in missionary offerings.” Although he was quick to claim that “the amount has by no means fallen off to the extent most missionary bodies have suffered,” Perkin admitted that the Assemblies had been reducing monthly allowances for current missionaries and holding back candidates who were otherwise ready to depart for foreign fields.Footnote ²⁸

Articles in pentecostal periodicals during the early 1930s reveal that missionaries and the people with whom they worked were feeling the pinch. “The depression has hit us rather hard,” wrote Joseph Sugar from the Sharannagar mission—a “philanthropical” home for “deserted wives,” widows, and orphans in North India. Although he praised God that “thus far we have not had to go hungry,” Sugar confessed that money was scarce and keeping people properly clothed had been impossible. “It will be so nice when we all get to Heaven where we will not have to wonder where the next meal is coming from or how we are to clothe ourselves and these people,” he acknowledged.Footnote ²⁹ Spirit-filled missionaries in China described similar struggles at a home for “destitute children” in Chinkiang (Zhenjiang). While this work had been carried on for over a decade “in the face of great hardship and financial stringency . . . in these times of depression the orphanage . . . has suffered more than in former years.”Footnote ³⁰ Comparable reports came from missions in other parts of China and India as well as from nations in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Writing from countries as diverse as Egypt, Singapore, Syria, and even Spain, missionaries warned that the global economic downturn was “especially hard on the native churches” as well as on evangelism and efforts to practice “pure religion” by caring for “the fatherless and widow in their affliction.”Footnote ³¹

For pentecostals accustomed to accounts of victorious advances in “heathen” territory, tales of retrenchment were perplexing. Testimonies of “suffering and privation on the field” provoked missionary advocates like Anna Reiff to criticize American Christians for failing to “loosen purse-strings” and forgetting to share “some of the comforts you are enjoying in this bountiful land.”Footnote ³² Although she acknowledged that “many of God's people in the homeland [were] out of employment,” Reiff suggested that the consequences of financial hardship in the United States did not compare to the havoc confronting missionaries and local populations in other nations. While many Americans were “finding it necessary to deny themselves of many a luxury and thousands are compelled to sacrifice on necessities, we know that the average family is still provided with the necessary staple foods.” In contrast, she wrote, “thousands in the world are starving.”Footnote ³³

By focusing so exclusively on the global effects of the “world-wide financial depression,” Reiff and other internationally-oriented pentecostals largely overlooked the deprivation that occurred within the United States as a result of economic collapse.Footnote ³⁴ Even those few who did acknowledge the depth of the domestic crisis and attempted to alleviate distress in their local communities often linked these efforts with a broader missionary agenda. “One valuable lesson that we have all been learning during this time of stress and strain has been to feel more deeply than ever before for the poor and to share what God gives us with them,” wrote Carrie Judd Montgomery, a prominent leader in the pentecostal movement and the editor of the widely circulated Triumphs of Faith journal. Yet sensitivity to “the suffering ones around us,” Montgomery suggested, ought to serve the larger purpose of heightening concern for “the dear missionaries who write us of their greatest need.”Footnote ³⁵

Montgomery's comments about caring for the needy show that some spirit-filled believers in the United States did try to address the afflictions and pains of Americans dispossessed by bank failures, unemployment, and other forms of financial hardship that flourished during the 1930s. Churches such as the Glad Tidings Tabernacle in Manhattan, which had “been conducting a work among the poor . . . for the last twenty years,” dedicated “one offering a month for this worthy cause.” In November of 1932, leaders of this ministry remarked that “the last year has been one of the worst we have experienced in quite a long time among the poor of New York City,” and exhorted those “who have been moved of God by the needs of their fellow creatures” to give generously that the church might “help alleviate suffering along many lines.”Footnote ³⁶ Even as they urged their constituents to contribute liberally for the relief of destitute children and families in Manhattan, however, ministers at the Glad Tidings Tabernacle reminded donors of their missionary commitments. Since the inception of the Assemblies of God in 1914, the Glad Tidings Tabernacle gave more to missions than any other congregation. The church's missionary offerings for the 1931–1933 period amounted to $27,646—more than twice the amount of the next largest donor. Throughout the 1930s, the Glad Tidings Tabernacle held its position as the premier sponsor of Assemblies of God missionaries, giving at least $146,171 from 1929 to 1939.Footnote ³⁷

With the help of the Glad Tidings Tabernacle and other pentecostal congregations around the country, the Assemblies of God missions program expanded steadily during the depression era. Despite a temporary decline during the 1931–1933 period, Assemblies of God missionary offerings grew by 68 percent overall for the decade stretching from the great Wall Street crash to the outbreak of World War II.Footnote ³⁸ With their wallets, American pentecostals proclaimed that God was not affected by the Great Depression even if many people in their neighborhoods and among the nations were suffering from the consequences of financial catastrophe. When they gave to “the Lord's work” around the globe, these spirit-filled Christians contributed to an array of ministries that attempted to help the victims of various kinds of calamity through preaching and prayer joined with poverty relief, medical care, and educational assistance. In places like Chinkiang, China; Assiout, Egypt; and Nawabganj, India, the monetary offerings of American pentecostals fed the hungry, housed the homeless, and clothed the naked.

While the spirit-filled community of the 1930s certainly included characters like John Steinbeck's hard-hearted Lisbeth Sandry—doomsday prophets whose apocalyptic perspective distanced them from the despair of the destitute—this diverse group of believers was also populated by personalities that defy common perceptions of pentecostal insularity, insensitivity, and theological ineptitude. Unlike Jim Casy—the former preacher who found spirit-filled faith an inadequate resource for responding to the religious crises resulting from economic collapse—many “fire-baptized believers” interpreted financial disaster as an opportunity to prove God's faithfulness. By saving and sending their “mites” to missionaries who proclaimed “the whole gospel to the whole man in the whole world,” many American pentecostals endeavored to show that, as one preacher put it, “God has gold up in heaven. . . . There is no depression there.”Footnote ³⁹