The Great Depression that began in 1929 left an indelible mark on a generation and was a traumatic national experience. It was also a difficult time for mission agencies, missionaries, and churches. It’s a long-held belief of many Christians that in difficult times, the church experiences revival and grows. This is not necessarily true. While some turn to faith, just as many do not. In American history, times of great trial tend to be bad for Christian churches and organizations. Attendance goes down, finances suffer, and there is a lack of people interested in being pastors or missionaries. This is American Christianity’s well-established pattern through the Revolutionary War, The Civil War, and The Great Depression. To make this time different, will require a real concerted effort by churches and Christian organizations, innovative solutions, and a willingness to change. Even then, the obstacles will be enormous.
How the U.S. Economy Tanked
That we are headed toward not just a recession, but another great depression should not be a surprise to anyone. Plenty of people were not surprised by the Great Depression of 1929; and many economists (such as Stephen Roach and Nouriel Roubini) were warning that Alan Greenspan’s roaring 1990’s economy was creating dangerous bubbles, reckless speculation, and dangerous financial instruments. It took until 2008 for all of that to become obvious. It should have been America’s great awakening to reality; but instead, the U.S. doubled-down by adding an extraordinary amount of debt. Some of that debt was needed since banks and consumers weren’t spending, leaving only one pillar left: the government. With an $850 million financial package, the government had to step in to prevent a total collapse of the banking system. Much more was provided by the government, but most of those trillions of dollars of aid went to corporations that hoarded cash or bought their own stock creating a new stock-bubble. This led to a great divide between Wall Street and Main street.
Inflated stocks, low interest rates, and inflated property prices made the stock market hit all-time highs, which led non-profits, churches, and other Christian organizations to believe that 2008 had just been a bump in the road. Unemployment went to all-time lows (as people got used to having multiple jobs without benefits). But the next “bull run” and “economic expansion” included low wages, a lack of benefits, and sky-rocketing health care and education costs. This confusingly inflated the stock market and depleted the average American’s bank account. By 2020, there was no room for a “black swan” event like the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is that we now have an economy that will eventually collapse harder than in 2008; but with no mechanisms to deal with the collapse. Having lowered interest rates for too long (Quantitative Easing 1,2 and 3), having failed to tax sufficiently, and having not built up a financial surplus, the United States must now add even more debt and raise it to levels mathematically impossible to pay back. It’s a problem that goes back at least three presidential administrations, if not five. This downturn will be severe. This world which has put nearly $200 trillion on an unpaid credit card will not be able to avoid this financial day of reckoning. It’s a reminder of how fragile and temporal the things of this world are.
How the American Church Responds During Financial Crisis
Going into the Great Depression of 1929, the American church felt invulnerable. Finances were good, but not great. There was still a good size missionary crew, people wanted to be pastors, denominations still felt confident, and the American church was in a period where it believed itself to be the true representatives of what it meant to be America. There was the widespread belief among evangelicals that Christians knew how to put America first and America knew how to put Christianity first. The American church, however, had already entered a period in which people were starting to distrust the church, were becoming disenchanted with religion in general, and were getting less engaged in foreign missionary work. The church noticed occasionally that things were not booming quite as much as before, but didn’t feel particularly alarmed. The church and Christian organizations didn’t realize that the waning of enthusiasm in the 1920’s would be exacerbated by the stock market collapse of 1929. All of this disappeared in the flash of a moment. The parallels to today are eerily similar.
“Interest in missions was waning before the depression, even before the Depression, missionary funds begun to decrease,” said Samuel C. Kincheloe. Financial giving had been going down for mission agencies in the 1920’s. The Foreign Mission Conference of North America saw a dramatic decline in young people wanting to become missionaries and the China mission-field got hit particularly hard. The Executive Secretary of the Home Missions Council reported that “almost all major denominations are now in a period of financial stringency in the conduct of mission work. We are in the days of failing budgets.” (1) Small rural churches were already seeing very big declines.
The confidence of American Christianity and in Christianity as the national religion fell apart quite quickly. Political power and finances had created hubris. Charles Fiske pointed out that “America has become almost hopelessly enamoured of a relilgion that is little more than a sanctified commercialism; it is hard in this day and this land to differentiate between religious aspiration and business prosperity.” (2) He continued: “America seems to be degenerating into a sort of Babsonian cult; which cannot distinguish between what is offered to God and what is accomplished for the glory of America and the furtherance of business enterprise.” (3)
Edwin Lewis wrote in 1934, “We borrowed our criteria of evaluation from the world about us—a world gone mad in its worship of mere size, a world that had set itself to create bigger ships, bigger aeroplanes, bigger locomotives, bigger buildings, bigger universities, bigger corporations, bigger banks, bigger everything-except men!”(4) When the economic bubble popped, the American church finally realized how much excess there had been; and how the hubris was unwarranted. In the best of times, evangelical churches are high-maintenance affairs with high over-head costs. Moments of financial crisis tend to make that abundantly clear.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” Mark Twain told us. The Great Depression of 2020 will include a financial shock so grave that it will completely re-order American society and change its values. Big spending by individuals will be frowned upon, and many companies and Christian organizations will have to scale down dramatically to survive. Some will fail to do so and will go bust. Others will scale down, but not enough, and go bust as well. Many Christians like to remind us that “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10). But the reality is that God doesn’t always take away suffering, doesn’t take away tough times, and every single day churches filled with wonderful people and that have done great work for decades, close down. The Kingdom always lives on and is immune to these downturns, but our man-made organizations are a different creature. There’s a difference between the Church and the post-Constantinian institutional church.
Things Will Have to Change Dramatically
This will not be a short crisis and the trauma of it will change giving patterns for baby-boomers and other generations. It will take at least a decade to re-invent the global economy and it will look far different than it does today. The American church will be tempted to pull back and cut out the missionary enterprise. Pulling back is understandable. Many churches and people won’t have a choice but to live in a more frugal way. Buildings are expensive, big staffs are expensive, and running programs costs money. The foreign field will not be as much of a priority when there are so many domestic needs within the community. Denominations and Christian organizations doing work that falls outside of the international mission category will fare even worse. Whatever is not tangible, dramatic, and clearly about more than the institution will be discarded. The missionary-enterprise has one advantage. Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:19 is a command to his church: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” There is a strong sense among churches that some form of international outreach is always necessary. Hopefully, this will be the case in the post-2020 world. We must continue the global ministry of our churches; especially in a time when the world will be tempted to isolate nations from each other. But it will not be an easy sell (so to speak), and it’s not a given. Societies turn very inward at times like this.
Now this may seem like a self-serving essay from a missionary. Is this an argument to preserve the missionary first and foremost as the most valuable part of the organization and church? For denominations, international ministry is the component that the denomination offers that is most exciting, which feels the most needed, and which best captures the imagination of church. That, and disaster relief, have tended to be the “bread and butter” of Christian denominations.
But this is not an argument for self-preservation amidst a Great Depression. Actually, missionaries, more than anybody in the church, are uniquely prepared to withstand a Great Depression. We literally live month to month every day of every year. All of us check our remittances monthly wondering if there will be enough to keep us on the field. We live with the pressure of funding other ministries and we check monthly if the money is there for us to continue those ministries to which we are giving our lives. The lives of our children and the sacrifices they make by living in such unstable situations weighs on us daily. Many of us never feel safe in our homes, knowing that a change in the local currency, problems with finances, local upheaval, or a myriad of other challenges can lead to needing to move at a moment’s notice. Going without seeing family, living with financial stress, having low salaries, not having enough for retirement, and being ready to have the bottom-fall out at any second is a reality that every missionary knows a lot about. Every missionary I know knows that tomorrow is not guaranteed for them, and that the money could disappear at any second, which will lead to losing your “home” at any moment. This is a stress so internalized into the psyche of missionaries that we don’t even talk about it much— it’s normal. It’s the deal we signed up for. When, not if, we enter a new Great Depression; missionaries can scale back, but still be catalytic figures, global connectors, and models for the church. They can even model how to do ministry on-the-fly; needing to always keep things running even if the resources are not there.
Although this time will be a period of crisis, the American church should quickly adapt and view this crisis as a unique opportunity. This can be a time of shedding old wine-skins and allowing ourselves to be molded into a new shape of clay: a people that radiate humility, peace, and servanthood. While our society has a difficult time remaining calm and unified; we can demonstrate the peace that surpasses all understanding. The church as well as denominations will need to scale back financially on some unnecessary things, and make sure that amidst the chaos they are catalysts for positive works, humble evangelism, and community unity. American Christianity can re-define itself in front of the world. Flexibility, adaptability, and engaging with difficult places will be something all American Christians will need to do during this challenging time. These are the times that bring humility and greater dependence on God and on each other. It’s a test of the character of the American church. And it is a test we need to pass with flying colors.
1) Research Memorandum on Religion in the Depression (New York: Social Science Research Council, Bulletin 33, 1937), p. 51.
2) Fisk, Charles. Confessions of a Puzzled Parson, Charles Scribner’s Sons 1928 p. 14.
3) Ibid.
4) Lewis, Edward. A Christian Manifesto (New York: Abingdon Press, 1934. p. 202.
Patrick Nachtigall is a Europe-based missionary and the author of 5 books dealing with globalization and Christianity; including In God We Trust?: A Challenge to American Evangelicals.”