Almost every American lost ground during the 1930s, and the churches shared in this loss. Yet Methodism by the end of the decade had established itself on a new footing of unity. Before gaining this ground, however, Methodism had been forced to admit the defeat of teetotalism by law. Uncle Sam went off the wagon when Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Several years earlier millions of Uncle Sam's nephews and nieces had joined the breadlines that appeared after the stock market crash of October 1929. "The workless walk about restlessly but without hurry," wrote a reporter in 1933. "Most of them have been without jobs for a solid year; many for two years . . . . Lacking small necessaries . . . at least half of them, no matter how respectable their pasts may have been, begin to 'ask' during the day, that is, to beg."
To feed those who were reduced to begging, Methodist, Evangelical, and United Brethren churches set up breadlines and opened soup kitchens, doing so even when they themselves were pinched by the Great Depression.
Bishops' salaries were cut in half, pastors' salaries were sharply reduced, college instructors were dismissed or endured pay cuts, missionaries were called home, church mortgages were refinanced, and church growth did not keep pace with population growth. While the population of the United States increased by 7.3 percent during the 1930s, United Methodism's share of the population dropped from 6.48 to 6.31 percent. Contrary to the expectations of many pastors, tight economic times did not drive persons to God.
Pinched on all sides, denominational leaders began to wonder whether they had been wise to devote so much time and energy in the 1920s to evolution and the Scopes' "monkey trial," instead of paying attention to the deformity of society. Methodist theologian Edwin Lewis, looking at all that needed to be done to make a better world, cried: "Let us affirm the Kingdom--the Christianizing of life everywhere, children with straight backs and happy faces, women released from drudgery and set free for creative living, industry conducted for the good of all, war and kindred evils done away, racial antipathies lost in a universal brotherhood, the rich heritage of culture made available to the last man."