Voiceless Women: Susanna Wesley's Daughters (Part 1)

Were it not for the fame of her evangelist sons, she would be unknown today. But history has made her a paragon, second only to the Proverbs 31 woman as the ideal to which American Christian mothers aspire.
I cannot remember a Mother's Day sermon that failed to mention Susanna Wesley. And yet, the men who hail the mother of John and Charles Wesley from their pulpits never mention Susanna's daughters. If those seven women were to hear their dysfunctional home held up as a model for others, I wonder what would they say?

The Susanna Wesley of legend was a minister's daughter, the youngest of her father's twenty-five children, a pastor's wife, the mother of 19 children-- including John (founder of the Methodists) and Charles (poet and author of nearly 9,000 hymns), a pastor's wife, and homeschooling mom extraordinaire. Almost the Protestant equivalent of Mary, Susanna's piety is for tossing her apron over her head to find privacy for prayer. What would she say if she knew she had inspired an Internet prayer apron giveaway three hundred years later?

Prayer did not shield the real Susanna from life's heartaches. Her marriage was difficult, her daughter crippled, her neighbors cruel. Twice her home burned to the ground. She pushed nineteen babies out of her body and buried nine (including all three sets of twins). She always struggled to afford necessities for her family--let alone furniture, was once abandoned by her husband, lost him to debtor's prison another time, and watched in agony as most of her daughters were abused by their husbands or died in childbirth. Her husband antagonized many of his parishioners and spent out his health laboring over his poetry, or his magnum opus, Dissertations on the Book of Job, a Bible commentary no one wanted to read. 

Samuel and Susanna's children:

1. Samuel, b. 1690
2. Emilia, b. 1692
3. Annesley, b. 1694 (died)
4. Jedediah, b. 1694 (died)
5. Susanna, b. 1695
6. Mary, b. 1696
7. Mehetabel, b. 1697
8. Infant 1, b. 1698 (stillborn)
9. Infant 2, b. 1698 (stillborn)
10. John, b. 1699 (died)
11. Benjamin, b. 1700 (died)
12. Infant 3, b. 1701 (died)
13. Infant 4, b. 1701 (died)
14. Anne, b. 1702
15. John Benjamin, b. 1703
16. Infant 5 (male), b. 1705 (accidentally smothered) 
17. Martha, b. 1706
18. Charles, b. 1707
19. Kezzia, b. 1709

Discipline in the Wesley Household

With her hands full and her husband not much help, Susanna ran a disciplined household of necessity. She later reflected on her principles of discipline and child training, which sound remarkably similar to those taught in the American church today:

"When they turned a year old (and some before) they were taught to fear the rod, and to cry softly. By this means they escaped abundance of correction they might otherwise have had. That most odious noise of the crying of children, was rarely heard in the house. The family usually lived in as much quietness, as if there had not been a child among them.

"As soon as they were grown pretty strong, they were confined to three meals a day. At dinner their little table, and chairs were placed by ours, where they could be viewed. They were allowed to eat and drink as much as they wanted, but not to ask for any thing. If they wanted something, they used to whisper to the maid which attended them, who came and spoke to me. As soon as they could handle a knife and fork, they were seated at our table. They were never allowed to choose their food, but always made to eat such things as were provided for the family.

"Mornings they had always spoon food and sometimes at nights. But whatever they had, they were never permitted to eat at those meals, of more than one thing, and of that very sparingly. Drinking or eating between meals was never allowed, unless in case of sickness, which seldom happened. Nor were they allowed to go into the kitchen to ask anything of the servants when they were eating. If it was known they did, they were certainly punished with the rod and the servants severely reprimanded.

"They were so constantly used to eat and drink what was given them, that when any of them was ill, there was no difficulty in making them take the most unpleasant medicine, for they dared not refuse it. However some of them would presently throw it up. This I mention to show that a person may be taught to take anything, though it is ever so unpleasant in his stomach.  

"In order to shape the minds of children, the first thing to be done is to conquer their will and bring them to an obedient spirit. To inform the understanding is a work of time, and must with children, proceed by slow degrees, as they are able to bear it. But the subjecting the will, is a thing which must be done at once and the sooner the better. For by neglecting timely correction they will be overcome with stubbornness, and obstinacy. This is hardly ever conquered later and never without using such severity as would be as painful to me as to the child. In the esteem of the world they pass for kind and indulgent, whom I call cruel parents, who permit their children to get habits, which they know must be later broken. Indeed, some are so stupidly fond, as in fun to teach their children to do things, which a while later they have severely beaten them for doing. When a child is corrected it must be conquered. This will not be hard to do if he is not grown headstrong by too much indulgence.

"When the will of a child is totally subdued, and it is brought to revere and stand in awe of the parents, then a great many childish follies, and faults may be past over. Some should be overlooked and taken no notice of, and others mildly reproved.

"I insist upon conquering the will of children early because this is the only strong and rational foundation of a religious education. Without this both precept and example will be ineffectual. But when this is thoroughly done, then a child is capable of being governed by the reason and piety of its parents until his own understanding comes to maturity and the principles of religion have taken root in the mind.

"They were quickly made to understand, they might have nothing they cried for, and instructed to speak handsomely for what they wanted. They were not allowed to ask, even the lowest servant for anything, without saying "Please give me such a thing;" and the servant was chided, if she ever let them omit that word. Taking God’s name in vain, cursing and swearing, profaneness, obscenity, rude, ill-bred names, were never heard among them. Nor were they ever permitted to call each other by their proper names without the addition of brother or sister.

"For some years we went on very well. Never were children in better disposed to piety, or in more subjection to their parents until that scattering of them after the fire into several families. In those families, they were left at full liberty to converse with the servants, which before they had always been restrained from, and to run abroad and play with any children, good or bad."

"When the house was rebuilt [after the fire in 1709] and the children all brought home, we entered upon a strict reform. It was then begun the custom of singing psalms at beginning and leaving school, morning and evening. Then also that of a general retirement at five o’clock was entered upon, when the oldest took the youngest that could speak, and the second the next, to whom they read the psalms for the day, and a chapter in the New Testament. In the morning they were directed to read the psalms and a chapter in the Old Testament, after which they went to their private prayers, before they got their breakfast, or came into the family. I thank God, the custom is still preserved among us."

Son John remarked in a sermon years later, "My own mother had ten children, each of whom had spirit enough; yet not one of them was ever heard to cry aloud after it was a year old." Still, harsh discipline was but one of the traumas experienced by the young Wesley daughters.

Childhood Trauma

Susanna and Samuel could not be said to model marital harmony. Emilia once lamented her father's "unaccountable love of discord", and Susanna admitted that she and her husband "never thought alike". Samuel Jr. wished that his parents were as comfortable together and he and his wife were. The children must all have been traumatized in 1701 when their father moved out over a political disagreement with his wife that arose during family prayer. Emily was nine; her sisters four, five, and six. Their parents had buried six dead infants in the past three years.

Samuel had moved back in by July of 1702. He was visiting a sick parishioner when the parsonage caught fire, destroying two-thirds of it. One of the girls got left behind in the burning house, but a sister began calling for her and neighbors were able to rescue her. Someone even thought to save Samuel's books from his study.

In 1705, when little Anne was three and Jack was two, the older Wesley sisters welcomed a new baby brother. Susanna being too exhausted to nurse the child, the newborn was sent next door to be cared for by a neighbor. The baby never came home. He was about three weeks old when the weary woman overlaid him one night, accidentally suffocating him.

Just weeks later, Samuel was hauled off to debtor's prison. Susanna, desperate to settle the debt, sent him her rings to sell, but Samuel sent them back, preferring to trust that God would provide. "A jail is a paradise in comparison of the life I led before I came hither," he wrote.

Neighbors Samuel had antagonized with his politics had no sympathy for the rector's family. They burned the Wesley's flax fields, viciously stabbed their milk cows and called the Wesley children "little devils". The family struggled for three miserable months before Samuel's friends came up with the money to pay his debts. Susanna later confided, "Strictly speaking, I never did want bread. But then I had so much care to get it before it was eat, and to pay for it after, as has often made it very unpleasant to me; and, I think, to have bread on such terms is the next degree of wretchedness to having none at all."

Baby Charles was born premature and did not open his eyes or cry for weeks. He was still the youngest when the Rectory Fire broke out in 1709. Little Jacky (John), his sisters' pet, barely escaped; the family could see him crying, "Help me!" from an upstairs window, standing on a chair, framed by flames against the midnight. Samuel wrote that he gathered some of the children in a circle in the garden to pray for their brother's soul; thankfully, other men were more interested in saving the boy's flesh. Molly and Hetty had been tossed to safety through a broken window. They lost everything but what they were wearing. Their mother was burned as she waded through flames to escape the house. Her first impulse had been to grab what gold and silver coin they had at the time, but her husband pushed her out the door toward safety.

After the fire, the children were dispersed to friends and relatives until the rectory could be rebuilt. Samuel's brother Matthew, a surgeon in London with no children of his own, took in Sukey and Hetty. Matthew was not particularly religious, but he took an interest in improving the prospects of his nieces. Samuel could not afford furniture for the new rectory. Visiting Epworth thirteen years later, Uncle Matthew observed that the house was only half-furnished, Susanna and the girls only "half-clothed". Matthew wondered what his brother had done with his income.

Samuel's daughters struggled to have presentable clothes to get jobs. Dresses that would grant them entrance to the world of literary culture were out of the question, though those circles would have allowed them to engage with men and women of their intellectual caliber. Meanwhile, Samuel spent large sums on books or travel not strictly necessary for his ministry and dreamed of going abroad as a missionary to China or the East Indies. The sisters complained about the "scandalous want of necessaries" and blamed poverty for Susanna's many health problems.

Home Education

Susanna had been educated by her father far beyond what was typical for a female of her time. At the age of 13, Susanna had the confidence to leave her Dissenter father's church altogether and join the Church of England. She grew into a learned and independent-minded woman. She was about twenty when she married the 28-year-old Anglican minister and poet Samuel Wesley. And she did a tremendous job of educating their children at home.

Like other large families, there were inside alliances. Sukey and Hetty were very close. Emilia was fond of her mother and quite attached to her baby brother John. Hetty adored Molly. John and Patty were the most alike; the others believed Patty was Susanna's favorite. (Charles wondered that his mother, for all her wisdom, did not better conceal her favoritism.) But Susanna did try to schedule equal time for the many individuals who made up her brood, and kept in touch by correspondence when they left her nest.

Not surprisingly, the Wesley kids all developed "a strong method of expressing themselves, especially in Poetry". Literature ruled in their home and for the rest of their lives they were always writing and sending poems to one another, for every occasion: comfort, congratulation, grief, encouragement, advice, or rebuke. Their upbringing taught them to fight with their wits, and, with the exception of gentler Patty, the siblings shared a taste for sarcasm and rapier-sharp satire.

All three Wesley brothers followed in their father's footsteps and were ordained. But alas, though Susanna educated her daughters on a level equal to their brothers and far beyond what was expected of their peers, she could not equip them to survive in a culture and family controlled, by divine order, by men. As successful as she was in developing their minds and teaching them the value of language and of learning, she never could offer them the kind of autonomy she had once claimed for herself. Nor could she prepare them to demand respect, to protect and provide for themselves, or to choose healthy relationships.

In many ways, motherhood was a sorrow and a burden to Susanna. To her brother-in-law, she wrote:"

[H]appy, thrice happy are you, happy is my sister, that buried your children in infancy, secure from temptation, secure from guilt, secure from want or shame, or loss of friends! They are safe beyond the reach of pain or sense of misery; being gone hence, nothing can touch them further. Believe me, Sir, it is better to mourn ten children dead than one living, and I have buried many."

Read what happened to the seven Wesley daughters in Voiceless Women: Lives of the Wesley Sisters (Part 2)

History, Our Story

If knowledge is power, then discovering that you been misled is disheartening at best.  History, according to my old school texts, was really "His Story", as if God himself had come up with the plot. What if he hadn't? Or what if we'd messed up the ending? Realizing that my understanding of science and history was both inadequate and faulty, I kept my mouth shut a lot more. My babies kept growing and I planned to teach them myself, so correcting my ignorance was imperative. At the same time, I was wary of "teachers" who showed too much eagerness.  How could I ascertain that a guide esteemed accuracy as much as I did, and wasn't merely pushing an agenda?

I first got acquainted with Garry Wills through his theological writing, but I soon discovered his books on American history--specifically, Head and Heart: American Christianities and Under God: Religion and American Politics. Compared to the filtered texts I had read as a teen, Wills offered a much deeper, broader view of the religious forces that continue to shape our nation and our government. And, unlike David Barton, Wills is an acclaimed historian. I could not get enough, carrying these hefty tomes along on my summer vacation and gasping over all the facts I had somehow missed.

Finally, someone else who had written about Mary Dyer's miscarriage! That story had bothered and mystified me since reading Winthrop's report of the exhumation in The Light and the Glory--a strangely covenantal twist on history with ties to a New England cult. Along with its sequels, also co-authored by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, this version of American history is prominent in some homeschooling curricula and has received accolades from prominent politicians like John Ashcroft and Sam Brownback. But The Light and the Glory was saturated with assumptions about supernatural involvement in human affairs. The Devil was just another character in the story, albeit an invisible one. Now here at last was a genuine professor of history pulling back the veil of mystery and presenting the facts simply, without spooky undertones. I felt as if I was privileged to be one of Wills' students, feverishly taking notes and hanging on every word.

Later on I discovered Sarah Vowell. I had heard her book The Wordy Shipmates discussed on NPR numerous times before I finally checked it out. Sarah's inimitable style suited me exactly. I loved her crisscrossing rabbit trails, her personal commentaries that made the history come alive, the stranger-than-fiction tales that made the facts so believable. The characters--John Cotton, John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams--were familiar names to me, but Vowell's analysis was fresh and honest. Between her and Wills, I finally found a way to understand and relate to the Puritans without feeling bound to defend them.

Replica of a missionary's house, Maui

Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, about the intertwined history of the USA and the Hawaiian Islands, was so good that I read it twice. When I visited the harbor at Lahaina on Maui, I saw for myself the dual influence of New England on that little Pacific island and pondered how it must have confused the locals to have English-speaking sailors and missionaries fighting over foreign moral codes. The heritage left by agrarian New England Calvinists lingers in the pungent air near the sugar mill, and is commemorated by this replica of a clapboard house nestled in the Kepaniwai Heritage Gardens in the Iao Valley.

On another cross-country trip, we listened to eminent historian David McCullough read his history of the American Revolution, 1776. The issues were so much less clear-cut than my old textbooks suggested, the colonists and the British all such colorful characters, the war so horribly cruel. My children wrestle with the complexities of that period every time they watch "Liberty's Kids", a engaging and invaluable series that dramatizes conflicting points of view during the birth of the American nation. Unlike the "homespun" versions, I find that straight history doesn't leave me feeling proud.  

It takes more courage to face history this way, more honesty, more stamina. I find that humanity's past, rather like its present, is anything but clean, anything but black and white. History is not a neat museum placard. The heroes aren't quite pure and the villains aren't quite vile. Every chapter has to be examined through the lenses of its place in time, its place on various maps, its cultural perspectives. And my judgments will change with my understanding. What once looked like moral courage may appear differently when the light shifts. 

I still love history, though, messy as it is. 

Because it is our story.

David Barton: Homespun History

History was my favorite subject as a kid.

I devoured the Little House on the Prairie series, was enchanted by Ben and Me, and giggled through Jean Fritz's junior biographies of King George III, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry. I would slip away into "the study" to read and re-read the fourth grade A Beka textbook on the American colonists, the lives of the presidents in our 1968 World Book, or tales of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus.

Later, our bookshelves bulged with biographies of Lincoln, Anabaptist stories of the Reformation, and thick volumes from Bob Jones University Press skimming across the centuries from ancient Greece to World War II. Once, Dad brought me home a copy of Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. And I could recite most of the dialogue from "A More Perfect Union", Brigham Young University's dramatic film about the Constitutional Convention.

When Bill Gothard first distributed David Barton "America's Godly Heritage" to homeschooling families in his Advanced Training Institute, I was entranced. We listened to that first cassette together and marveled at Barton's rapid-fire diction. After that, I would follow along with the tapes with my notebook and pencil and try desperately to copy out the quotations from the Founders as Barton galloped from one to the next at rodeo speed. Protected as I was from secular influences and celebrity worship, Barton was the equivalent of a rock star in my world. I collected Barton's numerous books and a stack of cassettes. I copied out and memorized my favorite lines. When he addressed the national ATI conferences in Tennessee, I was giddy with excitement. I wished the audience would quit applauding so he could fit in more of his speech!

Besides Barton's books on American history, I even purchased his obscure 31-page booklet How to Have Success With God, published in 1984:

"To God, obedience is better than anything."
"The more you do of what you hear from God, the more you will hear from God what to do!"
"Be a Christian who enjoys obeying God and you will enjoy being a Christian!"

Today, "David Barton is a former Vice Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas and a political consultant for the Republican National Committee. He is also a bestselling author and political activist who has worked diligently to arouse true patriotism and restore America to her Biblical foundation."

But back then, Barton and his organization Wallbuilders had not yet gained notoriety outside Texas. In time he would get chummy with Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, and the chairman of Gothard's Board of Directors, Congressman Sam Johnson of Texas. Brownback would say of Barton, "His research provides the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican effort in the country today -- bringing God back into the public square." And that was a mission I supported wholeheartedly.

When my worldview began to unravel, however, I revisited the Wallbuilders' website, curious for answers that would settle some of my doubts. For the first time I realized that David Barton has no credentials as an historian or an archivist. He holds a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and has been both a [math and science] teacher and a principal at a private Christian school in his hometown of Aledo, Texas.

As a homeschooled student myself with limited exposure to the ways of academia, I could sympathize with Barton's ignorance of correct protocol for citing sources. But I was flummoxed to learn that he lacks primary sources for some of his quotations. Including some of my favorite quotations--lines I used to recite glibly at candidates who brought up the spurious "separation of church and state". Now this was unsettling. 

I hadn't heard David Barton for well over a decade when he appeared as a guest on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". Well, here was a blast from my past! I settled in to listen to the Texan's familiar too-rapid drawl and was surprised. Before, I had only heard Barton lecture to sponge-like crowds. His material seemed much less concrete in an interview before a skeptical audience. (And this incredible exchange with Glenn Beck puts Barton much closer to "unintentional comedian" than "educator.")

Disillusioned with Barton, and with those who unquestioningly accept his version of the past, I discarded the remaining Wallbuilders publications on my bookshelf and set out to round out my re-education on American history and the variegated experiences and ideals of the brilliant yet flawed men who penned our founding documents. Thus did they launch these United States on her voyage into their future, hoping that we would prove equal to the task of sailing her, of maintaining her trim and keeping her prow pointed forward.

Even if we were to concede that America was intended to be a "Christian" nation (in spite of plain evidence to the contrary), even if we acknowledge that weather patterns were divine intervention on behalf of the Continental Army and that the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of the Constitution, even if we were to accept Barton's version of the past, how would that enlighten our present conversation? It does not therefore follow that George Washington would now use his influence in favor of creationism in science textbooks. It would be presumptive to assume that John Adams would cast his vote today for pointless transvaginal ultrasounds or that James Madison would oppose national healthcare. We could not even conclude that Thomas Jefferson would want his children reciting a pledge to a flag, much less to a nation "under God".

Mike Huckabee thinks our country would be improved we the people were all forced "at gunpoint, no less" to listen to David Barton's spin on our history. But I cannot help wondering how our Founding Fathers would respond today if they could hear Barton's appeal to an unrecognizable tradition. These men jettisoned the heavy time-worn design in favor of a revolutionary new ship of state they believed capable of carrying "we the people" through the vicissitudes of history. They were open-minded scientists, philosophers, and inventors, eagerly seeking and adopting new information and technological advances. Certainly, our nations' founders looked to the past for guidance as they plotted a new course. But to David Barton, history and tradition are anchors with which to slow progress and avoid forward-thinking.

When my daughter was very young, she used to protest when we explained disagreeable facts. "I don't want that to be true!", she would cry. Perhaps Barton is ignorant of the way he misleads and misinterprets evidence in order to achieve his political agenda.

Or perhaps he just doesn't want history to be true.

Faith of our Founding Fathers: Thomas Jefferson

Many years ago, I stood behind a church pew and argued with a college student who was the son of a Reformed Presbyterian minister. My family had just attended the Sunday evening service at his father's Pennsylvania church. Decades earlier, the building had belonged to a Christian & Missionary Alliance congregation. It was where my parents had been baptized as adults, where they were invited to sing cantatas with the choir, and where I was dedicated to the Christian God by a Pastor Raymond Dibble. We were in town to revisit those memories, but I was more fascinated by this Presbyterian church's songbook: a psalter that contained nothing but metrical psalms put to hymn tunes or chants.

I was also surprised to meet a young man close to my own age who had no aversion to conversation with a female. We stumbled onto the subject of American history, a favorite of mine. My fascination with the guy probably made me over-assertive. His studies had convinced him that Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian. At least not in the sense that his preacher-father would ever use that word. My home-education reading had led me to believe the opposite, and I was as stubborn as a bulldog. Not often did I have the opportunity to verbally wrestle with a handsome, intelligent young man! The intellectual contact made me as giddy as his wavy hair and Scottish last name did.

When my parents loaded us all back into the car to return to our hotel that night, my belief in our Christian founding fathers was still unswayed, though I did wonder how such such a cute Christian young man could defend such error so sincerely! I may even have been slightly jealous that he got to study such subjects in college.

My information had come largely from David Barton and ATI Wisdom Booklets. It was many more years before I realized the difference between real historians and David Barton. My definition of "Christian" has also undergone multiple revisions since that time. And now I understand what that pastor's kid was trying to explain to my much younger, naive but inquisitive and ever-searching self.

Thomas Jefferson

(Source: Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia at Monticello.org)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. (Letter to Peter Carr, 1787)

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. (Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1803)

In extracting the pure principles which he [Jesus] taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to them. . . . We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the Amphibologisms into which they have been led by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. (Letter to John Adams, 1813)

I must ever believe that religion substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. (Letter to Miles King, 1814)

But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up. Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,* invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his life.
* e. g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, &c.
(Letter to William Short, 1819)

No one sees with greater pleasure than myself the progress of reason in its advances towards rational Christianity. When we shall have done away the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three; when we shall have knocked down the artificial scaffolding, reared to mask from view the simple structure of Jesus, when, in short, we shall have unlearned every thing which has been taught since his day, and got back to the pure and simple doctrines he inculcated, we shall then be truly and worthily his disciples: and my opinion is that if nothing had ever been added to what flowed purely from his lips, the whole world would at this day have been Christian. I know that the case you cite, of Dr Drake, has been a common one. the religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers, to revolt them against the whole, and drive them rashly to pronounce its founder an impostor. (Letter to Timothy Pickering, 1821)

The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors. (Letter to John Adams, 1823)

In Memory of Thomas Granger

The first juvenile executed in the North American colonies was a young servant of "about 16 or 17" named Thomas Granger, who was hung in 1642 for having sex with a turkey.

According to Governor William Bradford's well-known history Of Plymouth Plantation*:

"He [Thomas Granger] was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though at first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others; and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; and confirmed it at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them." 

The curious can read more here.

The late Rousas J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) would have been right at home in Plymouth. Rushdoony was a racist minister who strongly influenced American fundamentalism and the religious right. Today he is remembered as the "father of the homeschool movement". Rushdoony repeatedly called for a return to the Old Testament legal code, including the death penalty for homosexual acts as well as for bestiality.

Rushdoony's ideological progeny Pat Robertson (whose law school teaches from Rushdoony's books) And Senator Rand Paul (with ties to Rushdoony's son-in-law Gary North) have each expressed concern that legalizing same-sex marriage is merely a slippery slope to bestiality.

Rand Paul's office now says he was merely joking. So he ought to appreciate this sunny response to Robertson that would have scandalized Governor Bradford:

*Strangely, I do not recall this story coming up when my dad read to us from Bradford's journal on Sunday afternoons, nor when it was read aloud to the staff at IBLP's Oklahoma Training Center. Does anyone know whether it was excised from Vision Forum's unabridged edition?

Library Shelf: The Birth of Satan

Without Satan, why believe in God?

". . . it is hardly surprising that many monotheists have constructed the embodiment, in stories and art and imaginings, of the energy and forces in life that seem inhospitable, disorderly, fractious. This is the character we know as Satan, whose origins are the subject of this book. We cannot know, or at least we do not, whether there is a Satan beyond this Satan. But. . . [Satan] is worthy of our respectful consideration."

The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots, by T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley, was earth-shattering for me. This library book kept me busy on a plane trip to Philadelphia, and I was so excited about it that I kept reading pages aloud to my sister on our drive to my uncle's Delaware beach house. 

For years I had been troubled by an incident in the life of King David. Like many David stories, this one is recorded twice: once in II Samuel 24 and once in I Chronicles 21. In both versions, the king gets in big trouble with God for ordering a national census and the whole population is punished. Only in the Samuel version, God is already angry with Israel, so he purposely incites David to order the census, and then everyone gets in trouble and 70,000 people die. In the Chronicles version (the later one), Satan opposes Israel by inciting David to number the people, God gets mad, the whole nation is punished and 70,000 people die. 

Now it seemed to me as a well-versed teenager that there ought to be a pretty big difference between Satan doing something, or God doing it. When I was young my parents liked to talk about putting God on the throne of my heart and not letting Satan sit there. We wanted to make God glad and that would inevitably disappoint Satan. They were polar opposites, right? Except for a strange heavenly scene in the book of Job, one wouldn't expect to find Satan and God hanging out together. So how did the Bible writers get these two characters mixed up?

A 19th-century commentary by the theologian Albert Barnes waves away the difficulty: "All temptation is permitted by God.... If Satan therefore provoked David to number the people, God allowed him. And what God allows, He may be said to do." Wow. That little sentence puts an awful lot of responsibility at God's feet. He committed the Holocaust. He burned witches in Salem and Protestants in Europe. He rapes women in Africa and altar boys in America. He infects people with AIDS, flies planes into buildings, and murders children in their schools.

As it turns out, monotheism is a very difficult balancing act. To make it work requires a devil so the one god left can be wholly good. Otherwise he's a monster, or bi-polar. The evolution of the Satan concept in Judaism pretty much blew my mind. The "satan" (common noun) shows up as a generic villain late in the history of the Old Testament, relieving Yahweh of some of the responsibility for his more "repellent" behavior. When the post-exilic Chronicles accounts were compiled, the scribes chose to make the satan responsible for tempting David.

Satan (proper noun) takes form as a character during the inter-testamental period, roughly around 200 B.C.E., and begins to be described as God's nemesis. The legend grew with interpretations of Genesis that accounted for the supernatural origin of demons. Followers of Jesus continued to develop this theme, supplying details and linking Satan to Old Testament characters and symbols that predated him as a personality. Dante and Milton added a great deal of color and shading to the picture, visualizing ever more horrific images in their descriptions of Satan and his infernal abode: Hell. 

Authors Wray and Mobley outline some of their findings in this fascinating WBUR interview, but the book's bibliographic notes are much more complete.

Somehow learning that Satan was only a solution to an ancient theological puzzle was a seismic shift for me. Ultimately, my faith in God required a cosmic enemy--an evil being trying to snatch my soul and longing to drag me into hell. A loving God didn't frighten me, it was God and Satan both ganging up on me--like they did with Job--that made me doubt my strength.

"In the end, the patronizing answer--'Satan is the source of evil'--never answers the question of the origins of evil. Because if God is initially, fully, and finally God, the Alpha and the Omega, then Satan is merely the Beta and the Psi. Satan may have emerged before time, but not before God..."

If Satan wasn't even discovered/invented till the Babylonian Captivity, who was that sneaky talking snake? My teachers always referred to him as an incarnation of the devil, a rebellious angel bitter because God threw him out of heaven, but the Jewish scriptures never refer to the serpent that way. And who introduced evil into that perfect garden? If God used his will to create Eve in his image, but chastised her for using hers... and we're back to the age-old puzzle of monotheism. Who is responsible for evil, pain, and suffering? Is God culpable for what he allows? Is he a monster? Is he bi-polar?

I was surprised to find that losing Satan meant losing God, too. But it was strangely liberating to take responsibility for all my own thoughts. To realize that my choices were simply my own, not tied to the outcome of some cosmic tug-of-war. My desires are merely the state of being a conscious human, not fed to me by angelic or demonic forces. And King David? Well, an epidemic happened to follow his national census. Bad things still happen, whether you're a monotheist, a polytheist, or an atheist. I just find that I can move on more quickly these days, relieved of the pressure to make sense of it all or figure out if God, or his satan, is trying to get my attention.

Robert Ingersoll, "The Great Agnostic"

A. B. Simpson called him "a daring blasphemer".

A Texas town named in his honor changed its designation to Redwater after a Christian revival swept the town a decade later.

He lectured in every state except Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma, using humor and education to open minds.

Robert's father was a preacher. Though strictly religious and an adherent to the Bible, he was a kind man and a devoted father, willing to make any sacrifice for his children. He acknowledged they had as much right to their own opinions as he did to his own. "He was great enough to tell me to read the Bible for myself, to be honest with myself, and if after reading it I concluded it was not the word of God, that it was my duty to say so." Over the years, the senior Ingersoll maintained a rich dialogue with his agnostic son, and himself came to give up the doctrine of hell.

Robert Ingersoll was an outspoken critic of religion and superstition, and an equally outspoken advocate for science, reason, racial equality, women's rights, children's rights, and free speech.

In this speech, he takes on the Old Testament God, quoting from Deuteronomy 20:

"And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself, and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies which the Lord thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of the cities of these people which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth."

Is it possible for man to conceive of anything more perfectly infamous? Can you believe that such directions were given by any being except an infinite fiend? Remember that the army receiving these instructions was one of invasion. Peace was offered upon condition that the people submitting should be the slaves of the invader; but if any should have the courage to defend their homes, to fight for the love of wife and child, then the sword was to spare none—not even the prattling, dimpled babe.

And we are called upon to worship such a God; to get upon our knees and tell him that he is good, that he is merciful, that he is just, that he is love. We are asked to stifle every noble sentiment of the soul, and to trample under foot all the sweet charities of the heart. Because we refuse to stultify ourselves—refuse to become liars—we are denounced, hated, traduced and ostracized here, and this same god threatens to torment us in eternal fire the moment death allows him to fiercely clutch our naked helpless souls. Let the people hate, let the god threaten—we will educate them, and we will despise and defy him.

The book, called the Bible, is filled with passages equally horrible, unjust and atrocious. This is the book to be read in schools in order to make our children loving, kind and gentle! This is the book to be recognized in our Constitution as the source of all authority and justice!

Strange! that no one has ever been persecuted by the church for believing God bad, while hundreds of millions have been destroyed for thinking him good. The orthodox church never will forgive the Universalist for saying "God is love." It has always been considered as one of the very highest evidences of true and undefiled religion to insist that all men, women and children deserve eternal damnation. It has always been heresy to say, "God will at last save all."

Excerpt from The Gods, The Complete Works of Robert Ingersoll (1900)

Where Do Bibles Come From?

A collection from our bookshelves

• The evolution of Yahweh-worship from polytheism. 
• Worship of Yahweh and Asherah in ancient Palestine. 
• The Samaritan Torah. 
• The Masoretic text. 
• Babylonian influence on Jewish theology and culture during the Captivity. 
• The full emergence of monotheism and the philosophical difficulties it presented. 
• The Septuagint. 
• The development of Jewish tradition and scholarship following the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.
• Rivalry between the early Christian and Pharisee sects. 
• The size limitations of papyrus manuscripts.
• The Council of Trent.

Each of these factors, and so many others, is bound up in the history of what we know as the Holy Bible. 

Children ask, "Where do babies come from?" and young Christians ask, "Where did the Bible come from?" Some teachers, and some parents, are more squeamish than others. But if one is to commit one's life to the words of the Bible, one may need more information than, "It came from God."

The books below are some that have helped me tease out the history of the Jewish/Christian scriptures. It became a sort of scavenger hunt, finding a piece here, matching it with a piece from there, until a clearer picture began to emerge. 

Most, if not all, of the authors referenced are Christian scholars. They handle the texts with respect without compromising their scholarship and I recommend them all to Christians and skeptics alike.

What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills

Wills is a historian, and a critical Catholic. In his quest to distill Jesus' meaning from the text, Wills treats each of the Gospels individually, commenting on its historical setting and intended audience chronologically, geographically, and politically. 

What Paul Meant by Garry Wills

This one gets intense. In a nutshell, Paul's letters are the oldest Christian documents, predating the organized "church", even predating the word "Christian". In his defense of Paul against charges of misogyny and anti-Semitism, Wills ends up telling us a lot about the controversial history of the New Testament, including  debate over the pseudo-Pauline epistles, later edits that changed the gender of Junia, and some interesting observations about Acts and Luke.

Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages by Jaroslav Pelikan

Pelikan was a professor, historian, author, and Lutheran pastor (who joined the Orthodox church late in life). His respect for the Bible and its Jewish heritage is evident throughout the work. Pelikan focuses mostly on the Old Testament here, and I found the parts about Genesis 1-3 especially illuminating. I only wished he had gone into even more detail.

The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots by T. J. Wray

Took this one along on a plane trip two years ago and couldn't put it down! Besides being chock full of interesting archaeological tidbits from the greater Palestine area, it made sense of several Old Testament passages that had puzzled me for years. The parts about King David and Job were of particular interest, and the bibliographical notes were very helpful.

From Brandon Withrow's excellent book review:

The rise of monotheism, which occurred between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C.E., presented a problem, according to Wray and Mobley. If God is good and the only real power, where do we lay the blame for evil? “Could it be that along with the development of monotheism is a growing existential frustration that makes it difficult for God’s people to accept a deity who is responsible for both good and evil?”

The solution to the problem of evil is Satan.

Initially, the word for Satan was “a function, rather than being a proper name,” argues Wray and Mobley. During the Diaspora, the Jews were exposed to other cultures, notably the dualism of the Persian religion. “Jewish communities were exposed to Ahriman [a Zoroastrian demon] during the Persian period, from 530 to 330 B.C.E.,” they write. “Satan as a divine opponent of the LORD and as author of evil does not appear until the second century B.C.E., by which time Jews in Babylon and Persia had been exposed to the dualism of Zoroastrianism and to its evil deity Ahriman for generations.”

The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong

Armstrong's weakness is detailing her sources; I had a lot more questions after reading this book. But it is a good place to start and full of information, especially about Judaic history.

Besides describing the sometimes surprising historical context of the various Biblical texts, Armstrong spends a lot of time explaining how the interpretation of and meaning ascribed to those texts changed throughout history. Bible study methods, for both Jews and Christians, have continually evolved to meet the needs of the time. Armstrong looks at how early rabbis and the Church fathers taught students to meditate on the text and draw multiple layers of meaning out: moral, metaphorical, literal, typological, mystical, and more.

The Book: A History of the Bible by Christopher De Hamel

De Hamel traces the physical history of the Bible, from individual manuscripts to multi-volume library, to single-bound volume. He writes as a historian, and this book is not quite as readable as the rest. I learned the most from the chapter about the St. Jerome's translation of the Vulgate and how he handled the Apocryphal books. 

Like biologists following DNA mutations, history scholars can trace the family tree of a particular manuscript Bible by noting minute errors made by scribes and faithfully transmitted by later copyists.

If the Bible is God's infallible gift to man containing all the answers we ever need to know, it will stand up to scrutiny. Don't be afraid to ask where your Bible came from. You may be as surprised and fascinated as when you discovered where you came from. 

Reflections on 9/11

Last fall, September 11th fell on a Sunday.

Churches all over floundered to commemorate the 10-year anniversary in some way. The church we attended turned it into a patriotic service reminiscent of the Fourth of July. Retirees dug out their military uniforms for the occasion. The choir led everyone in a zealous rendition of "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory", an odd Civil War anthem about men meting out judgement and destruction in God's name, and volunteering to die for His cause.

But I best remember the Sunday School class. An elderly Marine was proudly sporting his old uniform. We ate donuts and went around the table answering questions from the lesson plan about how the 9/11 attack had affected us. The Marine waxed nostalgic: "When the Japanese attacked us, we knew what to do with them. We rounded them up and put them in internment camps. Too bad we couldn't do that after 9/11." I was dumbfounded. This church had been an oasis of peace and kindness for me, but the people dressing in their Sunday best to sit in the pews or sing in the choir week after week. . .was this how they felt?

My exposure to religion leads me to paint it all with a broad brush. Religion hurts people. No matter how mild a God you believe in, he is your god, not the god of the others. And this distinction alone is sharp enough to be hurtful, no matter how good or kind you want your god to be.

Either All of Humankind is one big awkward family (with other life forms being extended relations), or my family is "the set of those who share my speculations about an afterlife and the character of a Supreme Being" and everyone else is an outsider and a threat.

The Truth Project

The Bible stands though the hills may tumble,

It will firmly stand when the earth shall crumble;

I will plant my feet on its firm foundation,

For the Bible stands. (Haldor Lillenas, 1917)

My dad and mom were baptized the year before I was born and took their faith very seriously. Having rejected their own religious upbringing as insufficient, my parents were young idealists with a passion for the Bible, which they regarded as the only authoritative Truth. In their quest for Bible truth, however, my parents were soon exposed to Bill Gothard and became enthusiastic alumni of his cult-like “Institute in Basic Life Principles” (aka as IBLP, and before that, I.B.Y.C.). Gothard’s program aims to prevent teen rebellion by promoting parents and other authority figures as God’s mouthpieces for their children and other subordinates. Despite being unmarried, he dispenses a lot of marriage and parenting and homeschooling advice, as well as formulas for business success, all ostensibly lifted from the pages of Scripture.

  

The Bible stands like a rock undaunted

’Mid the raging storms of time;

Its pages burn with the truth eternal,

And they glow with a light sublime.

From asking Jesus into my heart at the ripe age of 3 to memorizing verses in Sunday School, my own childish faith grew easily.  I always loved learning, so the Bible was a treasury of knowledge to me. Church interested me. I enjoyed watching other adults express their faith, enjoyed listening to my parents discuss their religious beliefs with their friends. However, each time my parents attended one of Gothard’s seminars, they brought back stricter rules for our home. For years I resisted these changes, while my parents used the Institute’s literature to invoke the Bible’s support for each restrictive new policy.

The Bible stands like a mountain towering

Far above the works of men;

Its truth by none ever was refuted,

And destroy it they never can.

When I turned 15, Mom confiscated my new birthday Walkman. To get it back, I had to listen, with my parents, to an IBLP cassette series on choosing Godly music. The producers criticized all the popular Christian artists I enjoyed, and I thought the reasoning offered was ridiculous, but I did want my Walkman. Besides, I really did want to be on God’s side, the side of my parental authorities. I signed my name on the commitment page at the end of the companion booklet.

From then on, I drank the kool-aid, too. I learned to deftly use the scriptures to defend my beliefs and those of my parents. Though I still balked at some of the more unreasonable teachings that came down from IBLP, I enjoyed being part of an elitist force for the kingdom of God. We went further than ordinary Christians, made sacrifices they wouldn’t dream of. It may have been an oppressive lifestyle, but the Bible alone was our authority and no historical or scientific “fact” could contradict its God-preserved veracity.

By age 25, I’d read both testaments through fifteen times, in multiple versions. Like a good lawyer, I could defend almost any Christian belief from scripture, and could anticipate opposing arguments from a Christian with a differing perspective. The Bible came to look more like a prism than a window.

The Bible stands and it will forever,

When the world has passed away;

By inspiration it has been given,

All its precepts I will obey.

I met my husband while we were both working for IBLP. We each left the “ministry” with mixed feelings. As our friendship got more serious, we both began to sort out our core beliefs and let go of legalistic baggage. We were desperate to know what was essential Christianity and what had merely been added on. We found a church that held belief in Jesus as its vital doctrine. As our children were born, I diligently taught them psalms and hymns, prayers and Bible stories. The scriptures would be their foundation, as they were mine. Knowing Bible truth would be their defense against manipulation, extremism and spiritual abuse.

The Bible stands every test we give it,

For its Author is divine;

By grace alone I expect to live it,

And to prove and to make it mine.

Then one year, our church decided to go through The Truth Project, a DVD mini-seminar from Focus on the Family. As Del Tackett made his presentation on the screen, we were jarred back in time. Tackett was promoting his “worldview” and insisting that the Bible, properly interpreted, would only endorse his perspective of marriage, of government, of economics, of science, of philosophy, of doctrine. Everything else was untrue or phony. We looked at each other and realized we’d seen this show before. Having learned how to justify anything from the pages of the Old and New Testaments, we simply weren’t convinced the Bible was as absolute or all-encompassing as these men wanted it to be.

Since then we’ve learned a lot about how other Christian groups interpret and engage with the Bible. We’ve studied how it came to us via oral tradition and manuscript and printing press, the history of translation and its challenges, its influence on literature and Western civilization. I view the Bible a lot differently these days. It is no longer my “sword” to use on opponents. It is not my talisman against evil, not an unbiased record of historical events. I no longer imagine God whispering words into the ears of attentive prophets anxiously taking notes.

I still want my children to be familiar with the Bible's teachings and its imagery. But, whereas I used to see the Bible as a book that told me about God, I now see it as a book that tells me about myself. A story, woven over many centuries, about the needs, desires, imaginations, fears, griefs, dreams, hopes, and aspirations that have shaped humanity’s destiny. Its pages chronicle mankind's evolving attempts to make sense of the world we inhabit, and to make it better. Humanity's struggle forward is the truth of the Bible.