The Most Famous Man in America/ 2

p. 355 of  "The Most Famous Man in America."

    "The most important intellectual influence on Beecher in this period was Herbert Spencer, the famed British social thinker who originated the term "survival of the fittest."  Spencer had a talent for stitching together ostensibly unrelated facts and phenomena into broad, over-arching structures--Beecher's favorite sort of thinking.  He was one of the earliest american fans of Herbert Spencer's "conception of gradual development"--the theory that everything--nature, society, individuals--evolves and, if left alone, progresses.  Spenser's all-encompassing, laissez-faire theory of evolution predated Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, but in its raw form it was just as shocking to people raised to believe that truth was eternal and identity was fixed.
     After the war Beecher was increasingly open about his religious liberalism.  In 1867 Ralph Waldo Emerson noted with surprise that "Beecher told me,that he did not hold one of the five points of Calvinism in a way to satisfy his father."  By 1870 Beecher was campaigning to drop the concept of hell, or divine punishment, from the official creed of Plymouth church.  "Love, with its freedom, has taken the place of authority, and of obedience to it, " he argued.  For those who had "ripened" to a "nobler plane," desire was a far more effective motive than fear.
     Those worried that such freedom might be sacrilegious, corrupting, or chaotic were reassured by the example of Beecher's own homey common sense.  "He was one of those men," as the writer Edward Eggleston noted appreciatively, "who connect the past with the future, and make of themselves a bridge for the passage of multitudes."
     Henry was often accosted by strangers, like the young man who sat down by him on a train, asking:  "Mr. Beecher!  Must I believe every word in the Bible, to be a Christian?"  "No!" replied Beecher.  "Well--what them?" asked the bewildered boy.  "You must believe the truth that is in the Bible."

The boy pondered this for a moment and then asked "Now, about the Incarnation?  Why do I need to believe in that?"  Beecher quickly sketched his views.  "I see, now what about conversion?"  they talked until the train reached the station.  the young man took his leave, saying, "Mr. Beecher, you have laid my ghosts."  "I hope they will never rise again," replied Beecher.

We are getting towards the end of the book.  Beecher has been preaching in Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York, for a long time, becoming a fixture on the scene, writing columns for the newspaper and influencing politics.  He also struck up a friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson and he said that he absorbed what Emerson wrote, digested it and also preached it in digested form.   He was actively involved in some revolts before the time of John Brown.  The dilemma with John Brown seems to have sobered Beecher and he spoke more circumspectly after this time.  We see, however, here that he has moved away from the strict Calvinism of his father, the gut-wrenching requirements for a genuine conversion, which is more than understandable.  But while he has shifted in this way, and has got involved with politics, and so on, and perhaps had several extra-marital affairs as he became famous, we see that he is now going in the direction of abandoning scriptural authority in way that lets him interpret it to his liking, beginning with the discarding of the concept of "hell".

I am not really familiar with Puritan/Calvinist sermons but just judging them by the titles, one could perhaps not even fault Beecher for wanting to speak about love, rather than fire and brimstone.  The message of "freedom" resonates with some of the things Luther wrote about freedom in Christ.  However, this is a freedom which comes after and even transcends the fear of hell and punishment.  My Judge is also my Savior, but he is still Judge.

It seems to me that Beecher made a similar change within the church to Emerson's change outside of it, both revolting against a very doctrinal Puritan Calvinism.  This all seems regrettable because it gives "doctrine" a bad name, as if it could not be good, right and wholesome.

With this throwing out of Calvinist doctrine seems to arise not a better grasp of true doctrine, but a liberalism which suits everyone's worldly hopes.   For a good stretch of it, I empathize with Beecher, but he seems to go from one extreme to the other missing the right foundation doctrinally in each instance.

From "The Most Famous Man in America" re: slavery and abolition

Reading the book on Henry Beecher is making me think about issues of conscience, civil disobedience, the temporal government and the extent to which it should be obeyed, and the role of the "church" in matters of justice, even if it wades into politics.  We know, of course, Luther's strict and famous distinction between the kingdoms.  This must always be held in mind.  But this distinction did not prevent him from decrying various societal ills and doing his best to "reform" the church and society.

The "Most Famous Man in America", pp. 246-248.

Some antislavery ministers countered Onesimus's story with opposing Scripture, such as Deuteronomy 23:15, God's injunction to Moses:  "Thou shalt not deliver to his master the servant which is escaped from his master to thee."  But most of the clergy followed Paul's ambivalent example, preaching obedience to the Fugitive Salve Laws while admonishing the slaveholders to voluntarily reform.  For the first time, however, a significant number of ministers went whole hog for slavery... 

"Then it was that I flamed,"  Henry said.  the rage he felt toward cowardly businessmen and callous slave owners was dwarfed by his contempt for these clergymen.  to the argument that the apostle Paul sanctioned the fugitive Slave laws, Henry responded that he might accept that claim--if slaveholders followed Paul's instructions by receiving their runaway servants as Christians and family members, educating them, encouraging them to marry and own property.  Of course, Henry noted, that would essentially spell the end of slavery.  In one notable speech Henry hammered home the absurdity of the biblical justification with an imitation of a runaway slave sauntering back into his master's house, "with his broad, black, beaming face," and greeting the shocked whites with a warm, "How d'ye do, my brother? and how d'ye do, my sister?'"
Henry's scriptural and legal arguments were padded with name-calling, motive impugning, and detailed accusations of hypocrisy and immorality  but he was careful to make a distinction between sin and sinners, between the "Slave Conspiracy" or the "Slave Power"--that is, the legal system of bondage and its major public defenders--and the average citizens of the South.  It was a distinction that would remain central to all of Henry's antislavery arguments, although often lost in the vituperation of his language...
It didn't take long for Henry to draw the fire of the leading mercantile mouthpiece, the conservative Journal of Commerce...  Hallock attacked liberal ministers in general, and the Independent and its anonymous "star contributor" [Henry Beecher] in particular, "for prostituting their professions and their pulpits and the Sabbath day to the preaching of Free-Soilism: and other poisonous "Ultraisms."  How dare these fanatics use the pulpit--which businessmen paid for--to denounce their patrons and preach politics."  The role of the clergy was to lead their congregants to personal piety.  Period.  Anything outside the church door was beyond their purview.
"Clergymen ought to understand that while they attend to the proper duties of their calling they will be respected, honored, and beloved,"  Hallock concluded, "but that if they descend to the arena of politics, their black coats will most likely be rolled in the dirt."  Any congregation that didn't want the filth of politics in their midst ought to fire the troublemakers, he suggested.  After all, what would fix a misguided minister faster than snatching away his "bread and butter?"
For some time now, Henry had been drifting fro theology towards practical moral matters, but the fight with the Journal hardened this move into a manifesto.  The Holy Gospel, he averred, is merely medicine for the sick soul.  "It has no intrinsic value as a system.  its end and value are in its power to stimulate the soul, to develop its faculties, to purify the emotions,"  he declared.  Christianity did not exist for the glory of God, he insisted, but for the pleasure and health of mankind.  Nowadays this therapeutic view of religion so thoroughly dominates American culture that it is almost impossible to imagine how shocked people were by Henry's words.
By contrast, Beecher claimed, the Journal of commerce promoted a "Coward's Ethic."  Such men wanted a Gospel "that will snatch away their sins while they are asleep;  some chloroform gospel."  Just what, Henry inquired sarcastically, did the Journal of Commerce consider a suitable topic for discussion in church?  After all, her observed, many modern sins were not mentioned in the Bible.  Should we not preach against drunkienness or swindling or gambling simply because they were not specifically forbidden in Scripture?
Perhaps the problem was merely a matter of distance?  Men like Gerard Hallock gladly gave money to send missionaries to the Far East, Henry noted, yet "a Turkish harem is a cradle of virgin purity" compared with the slave pens of the american south.  "Will the Journal tell us how many leagues off a sin must be before it is prudent and safe for courageous ministers to preach against it?"
... Back and forth they went, citing Scripture and secular law, with each paper reprinting the entire debate in special supplements.  Nasty as it was, the long clash rendered a great public service, challenging common prejudices, laying out statistics, detailing legal ordinances, examining every aspect of the problem.  It also gave a well-needed boost to the struggling Independent.  Subscriptions were increasing at double the previous rate, with hundreds of new readers every week.
... Suddenly Henry was a genuine celebrity, whose colorful sayings and doings were being picked up by newspapers across the country.  Not everyone agreed with Henry Ward Beecher, and nobody agreed with everything he had to say.  But everyone wanted to hear it. 

 Such men wanted a Gospel "that will snatch away their sins while they are asleep;  some chloroform gospel." This is the phrase that is embedding itself in my mind. It reminds me of Pres. Harrison's comment in "Christ have Mercy" regarding the Lord's supper.  We can be in danger that while holding the pristine doctrine of the real presence, we fail to see it as the reality among ourselves, that we have been formed into one body, the physical reality of our communal life. Also in baptism, we have been baptized altogether. 


But we are also reacting against those who in their zeal for "social justice" have let God's Word go and put the Gospel light of forgiveness of sins under the cover. Still forgiveness of "un-real" sins or forgiveness while you are "asleep", just becomes an idea and irrelevant as such. 

Current Reading/ Henry Beecher

In the vein of getting context for Emerson, Hawthorn, Abolition movements and Beecher family, I have this book out from Concordia  library on  "The Most Famous Man in America", the Pastor Henry Beecher, brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe of "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

http://www.amazon.com/Most-Famous-Man-America-Biography/dp/0385513976/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322965850&sr=8-1



It is most fascinating and thorough.  I feel that I am getting a really good view of what a number of contexts were the first part of the 19th century America, for example the differences in settings between Boston, New York and the frontier in Indiana.  It is interesting to note that the religious feeling was quite intense everywhere, but represented mostly by Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist churches.  Henry Beecher's own Calvinism was of a variable sort.  He did not like to be pinned down on intricacies of Reformed doctrine.  He tended to weasel through doctrinal examinations but was accepted anyhow for his charismatic preaching and engaging rhetoric, deep thinking and empathetic views.