Speaker 1: All right, hey everyone, this is an exclusive for the
Speaker 1: Audio Feed, re releasing and remastering an episode at George
Speaker 1: Bagbee and I did years ago one giant recording about
Speaker 1: the second Grade Awakening. Production values have increased significantly since then,
Speaker 1: so I'm re releasing it. The content is evergreen, so
Speaker 1: this isn't new, but if you haven't heard it, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend giving it a listen. And it sounds better.
Speaker 1: You can still find the old one, right, It's not
Speaker 1: like it's been unearthed, but I've been going through remastering
Speaker 1: the best of my backlook and so this is part
Speaker 1: of that. Anyway, Hope you guys are having a good Saturday.
Speaker 1: Oh by the way, this is a bonus. You're still
Speaker 1: getting five brand new episodes, but I figured I might
Speaker 1: as well throw this up as I'm going back through
Speaker 1: and fixing everything. Anyway, Hope you're doing well and anyway,
Speaker 1: onto the show. All right, George Bagbee, welcome back to
Speaker 1: The Jay Burdens Show.
Speaker 2: How are you doing. It's great to be back. I'm
Speaker 2: very happy to be on tonight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm very happy to have you on as well.
Speaker 1: I know obviously we've been talking behind the scenes, but
Speaker 1: It's good to have another, you know, public conversation because
Speaker 1: the last one's I mean, they got a really positive reaction,
Speaker 1: and I think everyone's happy to see you back on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to take a hiatus the io Saarn
Speaker 2: was on me. But the danger now has passed in
Speaker 2: a very decisive way. So I'm back on and I'm
Speaker 2: likely to be doing a lot more now I've been
Speaker 2: freed up, as it were.
Speaker 1: Well good, I'm I'm obviously, I'm I'm excited for that.
Speaker 1: You know, I've selfishly, at the very least, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you have a little bit more free time.
Speaker 2: And I've got a really fun project that I really
Speaker 2: hope to be working on. I don't think I don't
Speaker 2: think he'd mind me saying so, but I've been and
Speaker 2: taught talks with academic agent about producing an American history
Speaker 2: course for the academic Agency, and I have free time
Speaker 2: to do that now, surprisingly unexpectedly, and I'm gonna be
Speaker 2: working on that, I think. I think after after I
Speaker 2: get some things done around around the house here, I
Speaker 2: might start working on that next week. So I'll keep
Speaker 2: you posted about that, and when when it's finished, I
Speaker 2: mean to do some advertising. I want people to know
Speaker 2: about it, because that's my thing. My thing is American history.
Speaker 1: Well, and obviously you know most of the people who've
Speaker 1: you heard us speak before know that you were my
Speaker 1: history teacher, and so that that kind of neatly, neatly
Speaker 1: segues into our topic for the evening, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a condensed version of a lecture that you gave
Speaker 1: me in school. And there's one that was particularly impactful.
Speaker 1: It's one that I remember to this day. But do
Speaker 1: you want to just kind of, I guess, introduce our
Speaker 1: topic for the evening and then I can bring up
Speaker 1: the slides after that.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. So I made an editorial choice this year because
Speaker 2: I was teaching American history to this year to a
Speaker 2: high school class, and I decided to start with this lecture.
Speaker 2: To start with this lesson, I was supposed to start
Speaker 2: with the Civil War, and I decided to start to
Speaker 2: frame the Civil War with this particular set of lessons.
Speaker 2: I usually condense this one down to one lecture. I
Speaker 2: try to make it fit in an hour and a
Speaker 2: half block period, which is probably what you got when
Speaker 2: you went through my class, but it's it definitely merits
Speaker 2: more time than that, and it's one of my favorite subjects.
Speaker 2: It's about the second Great Awakening in the north of
Speaker 2: the United States in the decades just before the Civil War.
Speaker 2: So if we judge it generously, we can say last
Speaker 2: from eighteen hundred to eighteen sixty roughly, and it's the
Speaker 2: second grade Awakening. We have two periods that we call
Speaker 2: great Awakenings in American history. The first period is right
Speaker 2: before the War for Independence. We have people like George
Speaker 2: Whitfield and the Wesley brothers who are doing a lot
Speaker 2: of things in English speaking Protestant circles. We see the
Speaker 2: foundation of what becomes the Methodist Church. And this is
Speaker 2: an interesting movement. The first Great Awakening is a movement
Speaker 2: towards a low church sort of experience, a more congregational
Speaker 2: led church government. In a lot of American circles, it
Speaker 2: meant a revival among the Baptists and a great growth
Speaker 2: among Baptists who are dissenter like all purpose dissenters, and
Speaker 2: a movement away from organized legacy Protestant denominations. Well, in
Speaker 2: the second grade Awakening, we kind of see a a
Speaker 2: repeat of that, but it goes in very strange directions.
Speaker 2: So these these things, the first and second grade Awakening.
Speaker 2: They do have some things in common, but the second
Speaker 2: grade Awakening is much more weird, much more alien. Yet
Speaker 2: it gives us. It gives us a lot of institutions
Speaker 2: and beliefs and even consumer products that surprise us that
Speaker 2: they've become very American elements in the Western world. Even
Speaker 2: they even have currency well outside of America now. So
Speaker 2: the lesson is the second grade Awakening.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a pretty good intro to it.
Speaker 1: So if you could, I guess kind of actually, you
Speaker 1: know what, let's just go straight to the slides. We
Speaker 1: can go through with your presentation instead of me asking questions.
Speaker 1: So just give me a second to bring that up.
Speaker 1: And all right, so here's the first line.
Speaker 2: Can y'll see this?
Speaker 1: Yes, I can see it? Oh, perfect, all right? Should
Speaker 1: I go to the first side?
Speaker 2: Sure, So, as I frequently do in my lectures in history,
Speaker 2: I do a lot of comparisons and contrasts, and especially
Speaker 2: leading right up to the Civil War, it makes sense
Speaker 2: to do a lot of peace contrasts with the North
Speaker 2: and the South. And this is something about the Second
Speaker 2: Great Awakening that makes it very unique in American history
Speaker 2: is that it's part of the sectional conflict, especially that
Speaker 2: it's happening right before the greatest war in American history,
Speaker 2: the biggest sacrifice and struggle in American history, the contest
Speaker 2: between the no within the South. So here I'm kind
Speaker 2: of reviewing things that I've been making a point of
Speaker 2: in my class up until this point. The North has
Speaker 2: practically all the cities, with the exception of New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Louisiana is always so exceptional. New Orleans is rebably the
Speaker 2: only city of any size in the South. The rest
Speaker 2: of the South is very rural. The North has an
Speaker 2: industrial base. The North is the center of the merchant marine.
Speaker 2: Practically all ocean going ships are owned and operated out
Speaker 2: of the North. They dock in the South. The South
Speaker 2: has a lot of commerce. But those aren't Southerners on
Speaker 2: those ships. Those aren't Southerners manning those ships. And by
Speaker 2: the way, aren't they aren't Southerners bringing the slaves over
Speaker 2: back when the slave trade was legal. Those were Northerners
Speaker 2: and foreigners mostly doing that. The Southern trend is agricultural.
Speaker 2: The vast majority of Southerners are directly engagement agriculture on
Speaker 2: some level. So the northern trend is what I could
Speaker 2: characterize a modern We're going to talk more about what
Speaker 2: modern is, what modernism is. What are these people talking
Speaker 2: about when they say they have modern ideas. It is
Speaker 2: strongly related to the rejection of traditional beliefs, traditional ways
Speaker 2: of living in favor of new fangled ways. The South is,
Speaker 2: in contrast traditional. Now, we could go on about this contrast.
Speaker 2: I bookend this lecture with another lecture in the series
Speaker 2: about what Richard M. Weaver called the older religiousness of
Speaker 2: the South, and this is something that the Vanderbilt Agrarians
Speaker 2: also commemorated in their book. I'll take my stand end
Speaker 2: about how the South is this even even a medieval
Speaker 2: sort of holdout of Christendom. The South does not experience
Speaker 2: these religious innovations in this period. The South remains tied
Speaker 2: to its older religious beliefs, which is mostly low Church Protestantism,
Speaker 2: mostly Baptists and Methodists. Actually, but they don't they don't
Speaker 2: under they don't undergo this this period of religious innovation
Speaker 2: and hysteria and fanaticism that the North experiences during this time.
Speaker 2: So the Northern trend is also centralized economically, you know,
Speaker 2: you you have these these big uh trade and manufacturing
Speaker 2: centers in the North major port cities uh Boston, Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: New York City, Cincinnati, Chicago, places like that, Whereas the
Speaker 2: Southern trend is very decentralized. There are lots of local
Speaker 2: centers of influence and authority, and they are populated mostly
Speaker 2: by people and engaged in agriculture. So the Southern trend
Speaker 2: has always been with or had always been up until
Speaker 2: this point, it had always been with centers of influence
Speaker 2: and authority in regions and in states. So the Northern trend,
Speaker 2: you have this popularity of Northerners thinking of the Union
Speaker 2: as the final governmental authority in all matters in which
Speaker 2: people should be united, and they increasingly think that Americans
Speaker 2: should be on the same page about more and more things.
Speaker 2: Their culture in the North, the political culture in the North,
Speaker 2: mirrors their economic experience, and that it becomes more centralized
Speaker 2: and less diverse in a certain sense. In in the
Speaker 2: South of the word that we use to describe this
Speaker 2: decentralization and many many local centers of influence and authority,
Speaker 2: The old American term for that is a federal vision
Speaker 2: of politics. American federalism is also termed a vision of
Speaker 2: states' rights, where states have the final authority on what
Speaker 2: the constitution means, what what is constitutional law. You have
Speaker 2: a lot of Southern states talking about nullifying federal laws,
Speaker 2: believing that they have a constitutional mandate to do that,
Speaker 2: and many Southerners also saying from from even the ratification
Speaker 2: of the Constitution forward, the states have the right to
Speaker 2: leave the Union because the center of authority lies in
Speaker 2: regions and localities, not in a central federal government created
Speaker 2: by those states, by those regions. So that's that's a
Speaker 2: federal vision, and that's that's rather what Thomas Jefferson meant
Speaker 2: when when he was he was talking about republicanism and such.
Speaker 2: Jefferson has a lot to do with with those ideas. Anyway.
Speaker 2: In the North, during during these decades before the Civil War,
Speaker 2: we see this growth of new religious groups, and in
Speaker 2: the South you see a faithfulness to their old religious formulas,
Speaker 2: and you see you also, kind of amusingly, you see
Speaker 2: a lot of alarm and shock in dismay in the
Speaker 2: South about what's going on in the North. During these years,
Speaker 2: Southerners are are writing observation of these Northern religious groups,
Speaker 2: kind of commenting, these people are going and sane. Can
Speaker 2: we really be in a union with people like this,
Speaker 2: who who believe such such radical, strange things.
Speaker 1: How much of this had to do with the different
Speaker 1: groups that that I guess emigrated or are settled the
Speaker 1: different parts of the of the of the of the
Speaker 1: Old Americ, of the original thirteen colonies. Sorry I jumbled that,
Speaker 1: But how much of that had to do with like
Speaker 1: the different I guess like groups that made it up,
Speaker 1: and specifically like the religious groups and where they settled.
Speaker 1: I guess was the best way to say that.
Speaker 2: I think that these things are strongly connected, and many
Speaker 2: people in our in our circles are aware of the
Speaker 2: great history book Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fisher. One
Speaker 2: of the things that I did, and I'm sure you
Speaker 2: remember this, I I edited chapters from Albion's Seed and
Speaker 2: I distributed it to my history students. And I've been
Speaker 2: doing that ever since I've started teaching American history. I
Speaker 2: called them the folk Ways Presentations. And it wasn't just
Speaker 2: chapters from Albion's Seed. I've been working really hard to
Speaker 2: build chapters or build handouts for my other students about
Speaker 2: other groups in the United States, immigrant groups for instance,
Speaker 2: and their characteristics, but the predominant characteristics in American history
Speaker 2: come from the old Anglo American stock. We have other
Speaker 2: very important groups in American history. I am not denying
Speaker 2: their influence. I'm not denying their importance. I'm not denying
Speaker 2: their prevalence or anything. I really like them and appreciate them.
Speaker 2: The Irish, Americans, the Germans, there are other major influences.
Speaker 2: But the Anglo American groups found themselves in conflict here
Speaker 2: just as they had been in conflict back in England.
Speaker 2: Even though they're all Anglos, they are differentiated by region
Speaker 2: of England, by religious tradition, and by many other things
Speaker 2: that Fisher documents in his book. They have different They've
Speaker 2: got different food, they live in different housing. The religious
Speaker 2: differences are are major. He he has four different groups
Speaker 2: that he talks about, Quakers, Puritans, the Virginia Cavaliers, and
Speaker 2: the famous scotch Irish, who go mostly to the back
Speaker 2: country to the Appalachians. So of those of those four,
Speaker 2: the scotch Irish and the Cavaliers form what we what
Speaker 2: we come to see as Southern civilization. The Northerners and
Speaker 2: Southerners obviously find themselves in conflict with one another about
Speaker 2: a great many things, not just not just political economic
Speaker 2: beliefs about slavery, but also beliefs about the past. What
Speaker 2: do we do with our heritage? Is there a constructive
Speaker 2: use for it? Must it be rejected in some radical way?
Speaker 2: Must we must we have some kind of purgation of
Speaker 2: religious heritage or cultural heritage. What One of the things
Speaker 2: that makes the North stand out from colonial days is
Speaker 2: the agreement among Quakers and Puritans that their religious heritage
Speaker 2: in England can cannot be salvaged. It basically needs to
Speaker 2: be redone from top to bottom. It needs to be
Speaker 2: demolished and completely renovated, completely rebuilt. The term Puritan, for instance,
Speaker 2: it refers to their religious belief that the Church of
Speaker 2: England was deeply tainted by Roman Catholic beliefs and practices
Speaker 2: and must be purified. And that's a very radical position.
Speaker 2: The Puritans rejected the church calendar. They would punish people
Speaker 2: that celebrated Christmas. These are people that took this separatism
Speaker 2: and this purgative view of their religious past and their
Speaker 2: culture as English, as English people. They wanted to get
Speaker 2: rid of old traditions, wanted to get rid of old
Speaker 2: beliefs because they believed those things were evil. They believed
Speaker 2: that Roman Catholicism was of the devil, which is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why they punished people that observed these things,
Speaker 2: even people who claim to be Protestants in all other respects.
Speaker 2: So these are these traits do have a lot to
Speaker 2: do with the things we see in the second grade
Speaker 2: Awakening and the difference we see between northern and southern
Speaker 2: religious traditions.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like that old line, right that the American
Speaker 1: the War between the States should be understood as a
Speaker 1: sequel to the to the British Civil War, you know,
Speaker 1: because essentially you have those men's descendants fighting and out again,
Speaker 1: you know, just across the ocean.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and that's that is a classic old interpretation of
Speaker 2: the American Civil War. You have a lot of Americans
Speaker 2: and also foreign observers saying this is the Anglo version
Speaker 2: of the repetition of history. You know, you look at
Speaker 2: the history of France, and it seems that the French
Speaker 2: reenact dramamatic episodes from their history over and over again.
Speaker 2: You know, the French Revolution and then the Revolution in
Speaker 2: eighteen forty eight, or the Paris Commune in the Franco
Speaker 2: Prussian War. These things do seem to have a lot
Speaker 2: in common. But we can look at the history of
Speaker 2: Anglo Americans in England and in the United States, and
Speaker 2: we see some commonalities there too. Cavaliers and roundheads, we
Speaker 2: can see them in both places.
Speaker 1: All right, should I go to the next side now?
Speaker 2: Yes? Please? Okay? So the Second Great Awakening is initially
Speaker 2: characterized by a popularity of revival meetings. Evangelists would travel around,
Speaker 2: mostly in the North. Now this did happen in the
Speaker 2: South as well. The camp meetings did what they did
Speaker 2: in the First Great Awakening. They seemed to swell the
Speaker 2: ranks of established low church Protestants in the South, Baptists
Speaker 2: and Methodists for the most part. If we wanted to
Speaker 2: make a comparison these days, we would say it would
Speaker 2: be like Pentecostal worship or something the growth of Pentecostal sex.
Speaker 2: These are emotional responses that people are getting in the
Speaker 2: camp meeting atmosphere. In the North, the camp meetings seemed
Speaker 2: to produce rather different results, much more innovative results. So
Speaker 2: what happens is they are traveling evangelists. They go from
Speaker 2: place to place. They may stay in one place for
Speaker 2: a week or so, give sermons every night, get a
Speaker 2: response from the audience. One of one of the innovations
Speaker 2: that come out of the Second Grade Awakening camp meetings
Speaker 2: is the altar call, which many American Christians now associate
Speaker 2: strongly with normalcy or tradition. In the tradition I come
Speaker 2: from the pastors that I grew up knowing, all Southern Baptists.
Speaker 2: That's that's the tradition of my birth. Those pastors would
Speaker 2: talk among themselves with pride that they had never given
Speaker 2: a sermon without an alter call, and they portrayed themselves
Speaker 2: as very traditional, old fashioned sorts of Baptists. They took
Speaker 2: that as a point of authority. Yet the alter call
Speaker 2: is something that becomes popular with the Second Grade Awakening.
Speaker 2: We can actually trace its origin and such, and it
Speaker 2: was controversial at the time. The alter call is where
Speaker 2: there is emotional music played at the end of a service.
Speaker 2: The preacher makes an impassioned declaration for the members of
Speaker 2: the congregation to dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ. They
Speaker 2: sing an emotional chorus, and they may sing the chorus
Speaker 2: for many stanzas. This could go on for a while,
Speaker 2: especially if the response has traction. You know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of peace people responding, people coming down to
Speaker 2: the altar at the at the foot of the pulpit,
Speaker 2: which is which is a really interesting connection there, the
Speaker 2: pulpit and the altar kind of unified in this kind
Speaker 2: of of religious expression. And I am Eastern Orthodox now,
Speaker 2: and the idea of the pulpit and the altar being
Speaker 2: in any sort of even proximity to one another is
Speaker 2: really shocking to me now, like that that is a
Speaker 2: really different kind of expression, uh, and different sort of symbolism.
Speaker 2: I think. I think Roman Catholics and and many Liturgical
Speaker 2: Protestants would would recognize that as a difference as well.
Speaker 2: I know in many Presbyterian churches the pulpit is off
Speaker 2: to the side, it's not in the center.
Speaker 1: Yes, in my experience that is that's the case, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know where I go to church, so
Speaker 1: that that's you know, very much, very much true in
Speaker 1: my experience at least.
Speaker 2: Indeed, think of old fashioned American Protestant church saying in
Speaker 2: Charleston or Philadelphia or some old place, a very ornate
Speaker 2: wooden box, you know, with a little twirling staircase going
Speaker 2: up to it or something over on the right hand
Speaker 2: side or the left hand side, of a church. That's
Speaker 2: that's the sort of thing, and that's that would fit
Speaker 2: with my tradition. More or less, the homily is given
Speaker 2: from the side. And also the homily is not the
Speaker 2: main point of the service. The Eucharist is. The homily
Speaker 2: could be omitted, you know, it's it's not not even
Speaker 2: a necessary part. But with the camp meeting, it's all
Speaker 2: about the the homily. It's about the speaker. It's about
Speaker 2: the evangelist who is talking and explaining scripture or some
Speaker 2: point of theology, or eventually it came to be social
Speaker 2: causes that the evangelist was focusing on in the meetings
Speaker 2: and asking people to dedicate themselves to a cause, maybe
Speaker 2: in the name of Jesus. But it seems to be
Speaker 2: auxiliary to traditional Christianity or separate from traditional Christianity. You
Speaker 2: can advance the slide down.
Speaker 1: Short, just give me a second.
Speaker 2: So in the North, well and in the South as well,
Speaker 2: to the extent the second grade Awakening is influential there.
Speaker 2: It's a movement away from organized religion. There are lots
Speaker 2: of people creating new religious groups. Not all of these
Speaker 2: groups are are in fact religious in focus, so some
Speaker 2: of them are more humanist, deistical focused on social causes,
Speaker 2: maybe exclusively. We're going to look at a couple of
Speaker 2: those that these are outliers. They're they're not very popular,
Speaker 2: but they're they're nevertheless influential. They tended to have a
Speaker 2: lot of literary people involved, so they were popular for that.
Speaker 2: But it's a movement away from the legacy denominations, if
Speaker 2: you will. It is Episcopalians becoming Methodists, it is Methodists
Speaker 2: becoming Baptists, it is Baptists becoming more narrow sectarians. And
Speaker 2: I'm not talking about what what we what we know
Speaker 2: of today in America. We talk a lot about the
Speaker 2: non denominational Christians. That's not what I'm talking about in
Speaker 2: this instance. In this case, the people that fall away
Speaker 2: from organized religion altogether are coming up with their own
Speaker 2: broad organizations. We're going to see some of them had
Speaker 2: great ambitions on that front that never bore fruit, and
Speaker 2: some of them created some might say denominations, some might
Speaker 2: say new religions from scratch during this time. Now, I
Speaker 2: think that this is fascinating and I take this very seriously.
Speaker 2: Another thing that I do is I teach Greek literature,
Speaker 2: ancient Greek literature. I teach Homer and Sophocles and Avid
Speaker 2: and Herodotus and things like that. And one thing that
Speaker 2: I'm always trying to do my students there is I
Speaker 2: really want them to take paganism seriously. One of one
Speaker 2: of my pet peeves is I strongly dislike the modern
Speaker 2: approach to the Oracle at Delphi, where scoffing, mocking moderns,
Speaker 2: who typically don't know anything about any religious tradition, maybe
Speaker 2: nothing about their own or anybody else's necessarily they kind
Speaker 2: of take a new atheist approach and say, oh, it's
Speaker 2: all superstition, it's all nonsense. You know, sophisticated people would
Speaker 2: never believe these things, And they talk about the oracle
Speaker 2: at Delphi getting high off of gases and then babbling
Speaker 2: away in some hallucination and the priests making money on this.
Speaker 2: On the side, there are a great many reasons to
Speaker 2: dismiss that interpretation and take the oracle seriously. Just because
Speaker 2: these people are pagans doesn't mean that there aren't spirits involved.
Speaker 2: I'm a Christian and I believe in the spiritual world.
Speaker 2: It's one of the first things we say. I'm a
Speaker 2: Nicene Creed, right, I believe in that God created all
Speaker 2: of it visible and invisible, and it wouldn't surprise me
Speaker 2: at all if the Pagans were actually communing with spirits
Speaker 2: and getting information from spirits. But I bring that kind
Speaker 2: of sensibility, that that sort of outlook into the second
Speaker 2: grade Awakening. I am not entirely sure that the founders
Speaker 2: of Mormonism were Charlatan's for instance. I am willing to
Speaker 2: accept the possibility. I believe it is certainly possible for
Speaker 2: people to talk to spirits. I believe that as an
Speaker 2: article of faith. I personally had experience with such things myself.
Speaker 2: But that's beside the point. Joseph Smith may have actually
Speaker 2: received messages from spirits, and I think they were liars.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why we're not supposed to
Speaker 2: mess with spirits, is because we have no idea how
Speaker 2: to distinguish between an angel and a devil. But this
Speaker 2: is a very mysterious time in American history where there
Speaker 2: are new religions coming into being, and these religions are
Speaker 2: still with us today, and some of them have lots
Speaker 2: of Christian trappings. I think that it's a productive question
Speaker 2: to ask, would you consider this group Christian? Do they
Speaker 2: believe enough Christian things. Some of them are more likely
Speaker 2: candidates than others. Maybe we can still call them Christian
Speaker 2: in some sense, but others I think have obviously gone
Speaker 2: too far away.
Speaker 1: Well, right, And there's a there's a dialogue around this,
Speaker 1: you know that people will say like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: you Christians will engage in this no true Scotsman fallacy,
Speaker 1: right like, oh, they weren't really Christians. And look, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, there's there's a whole lot of that,
Speaker 1: you know, especially now you see it in the more
Speaker 1: like yeah, excuse me, kind of like out there like
Speaker 1: charismatic style, you know, evangelicals, right like if you're not
Speaker 1: you know, from the Bob Jones Memorial Baptist Church, well
Speaker 1: then you're you're hell abound. But nonetheless, and I kind
Speaker 1: of know where this is going. You know, there's enough
Speaker 1: people and there's enough different groups in here that are
Speaker 1: really quite odd, you know, that are like technically Christian
Speaker 1: like they would say so. But yes, there comes a
Speaker 1: certain point where it's like, well, okay, like could do
Speaker 1: you really still apply?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And I guess we'll get into that more specifically talking
Speaker 1: about some of these different groups, but I very much
Speaker 1: see your point, because it is an interesting question.
Speaker 2: It's a curious one, and it's it can get kind
Speaker 2: of fuh trading with with some Protestant sex because you
Speaker 2: can talk to them about the essentials of belief and
Speaker 2: and more often than not, I found that I can
Speaker 2: work in organizations with lots of low church Protestants. They
Speaker 2: tend to be hesitant about things like the Creed, but
Speaker 2: when you sit down with them and talk it out,
Speaker 2: it's just that they don't they don't want to have
Speaker 2: an old Creed with some unfamiliar words in it, but
Speaker 2: it but it turns out they believe everything in the Creed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we we we might be getting slightly off topic
Speaker 1: because we we did cover this in another conversation you
Speaker 1: and I had on you know, on evangelicals and uh
Speaker 1: anti intellectualism. And I'm not trying to cut us off,
Speaker 1: you know, because that is an conversation. But we've got
Speaker 1: a lot of slides, and uh, I do want to
Speaker 1: get this done in one in one shot, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Yes, let's let's proceed. Okay. So one of the things
Speaker 2: I did with with my slideshow here I cut out
Speaker 2: most of the text, but I did want to share
Speaker 2: some some quotes and and some bullet points with our
Speaker 2: audience here. And I'm not going to delabor this. It's
Speaker 2: not like you're taking notes on this. But I did
Speaker 2: make a mistake in a previous stream with you. I
Speaker 2: think I mistook Charles Finney for Charles Spurgeon. But if
Speaker 2: but yes, obviously Spurgeon was an Englishman. But I I
Speaker 2: did apologize to those that that pointed that out. I
Speaker 2: made a stream, well, I made I made a video,
Speaker 2: a solo video of my own, concerning that, just because
Speaker 2: I wanted to rectify that that was an embarrassing error
Speaker 2: in my part. But I did want to focus in
Speaker 2: on Charles Finny because Charles Finny is a very instrumental
Speaker 2: character and socond great Awakening. He we we could we
Speaker 2: could quote him saying a number of interesting, influential, important
Speaker 2: things that that characterize some of these even evangelists doing
Speaker 2: the tent meetings during this time. He is very famous
Speaker 2: for tent meetings. If we look at his quotes that
Speaker 2: I selected here, Phiney said, the Gospel has been made
Speaker 2: of no effect by the traditions of man. Now, I
Speaker 2: think that this is an exceptional quote and a and
Speaker 2: a very revealing sort of statement about the second grade
Speaker 2: Awakening and something of the spirit of it. This is
Speaker 2: an anti traditional sort of movement. This is going away
Speaker 2: from the organized denominations, the Protestant denominations. I don't I
Speaker 2: don't believe this is going on in the American Catholic
Speaker 2: world at all, which which is far far smaller back then.
Speaker 2: It's it's practically only Irish immigrants back then. There are
Speaker 2: a couple of exceptions arrests. Bronson is a is an
Speaker 2: Anglo convert to Catholicism way back then. Very interesting character.
Speaker 2: But Charles Finny when he when he talks about the
Speaker 2: traditions of Man, he he lambasted Roman Catholicism. But he's
Speaker 2: not speaking to Roman Catholics in this sermon. He's talking
Speaker 2: to a Protestant audience overwhelmingly Protestant, and he is dumping
Speaker 2: on the Protestant churches. So what happens in these these
Speaker 2: tent meetings, uh, these these cant meetings, these revivals, is
Speaker 2: people like Finny go around and say you need to
Speaker 2: have an intense experience, an individualized experience of religion, and
Speaker 2: you should be suspicious of what the established clergy and
Speaker 2: the Sunday schools and churches around here have taught you
Speaker 2: what religion is and what it means to be a
Speaker 2: confessing of you know, disciplined Christian in this community. And this,
Speaker 2: and this leaves his converts with an interesting perspective. The
Speaker 2: evangelist always moves on. The evangelist leaves his his disciples
Speaker 2: behind as it were, you know, and they frequently form
Speaker 2: new congregations. But these things don't always work out there.
Speaker 2: There are an awful lot of disillusioned people after this
Speaker 2: who fall out of church membership, fall out of church
Speaker 2: attendance entirely. And we're going to revisit this phenomenon later
Speaker 2: because there's an important character that we visit that that
Speaker 2: talks about this directly. Another thing, Finny says, God has
Speaker 2: found it necessary to take advantage of the excitability there
Speaker 2: is in mankind to produce powerful excitements among them before
Speaker 2: he can lead them to obey. Now this corresponds to
Speaker 2: what I had said about Finny previously when I mistakenly
Speaker 2: called him Spurgeon. When Finny justified creating emotional outbursts in
Speaker 2: his in his congregants in order to get them to
Speaker 2: make an emotional commitment at the altar call, and he
Speaker 2: discounts you a reasoned decision in favor of the emotional moment.
Speaker 2: There's a certain sense in which he kind of the
Speaker 2: like a Protestant Edward Burne's, you know, a little bit
Speaker 2: less of like obviously much less cynical, you know, but
Speaker 2: in kind of the same way that it was a
Speaker 2: It was like an escalation in arms almost. You know
Speaker 2: that unless you could you could match it, you were
Speaker 2: kind of out compete it to a certain degree. Indeed,
Speaker 2: now I want to be I want to be quite clear,
Speaker 2: I'm very hesitant to call any of these people cynical.
Speaker 2: I don't like looking in history and discounting what is
Speaker 2: said in what is done as pure cynicism. I think
Speaker 2: that I think that may happen far more often these days,
Speaker 2: but I'm not I'm not teaching the history of the
Speaker 2: twenty twenties. I'm teaching history of a long time back well.
Speaker 2: And I think that was completely sincere.
Speaker 1: I said he was less less cynical than Burnet. Absolute,
Speaker 1: I think particlear but absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I think I think Finny was doing emotional manipulation,
Speaker 2: and I think that he was manipulating people sincerely believing
Speaker 2: he was doing good and saving their souls.
Speaker 1: Well, and you've accepted the premise that if you firmly believe,
Speaker 1: the people who don't listen to you are going to
Speaker 1: be condemned to an eternity of torment. Like given that premise,
Speaker 1: emotionally manipulating people is is the lesser of two evils.
Speaker 2: You know, right now, I've I've already listed these things out,
Speaker 2: but I didn't want to go over them a little bit.
Speaker 2: Finny was a progressive of his day. He did things like, uh,
Speaker 2: he had women lead prayer in his meetings. This caused
Speaker 2: a big controversy in his day. This is this is
Speaker 2: obviously against the Christian tradition in in worship and leadership
Speaker 2: and church. He gave these very emotional alter calls. This
Speaker 2: becomes mainstreamed in in certain uh, certain circles. He popularizes
Speaker 2: praise choruses. I read about Dwight L. Moody, a Chicago
Speaker 2: evangelist who was a contemporary and disciple of Finny, and
Speaker 2: Moody does a lot to mainstream that practice as well.
Speaker 2: Now what's interesting about that is is those old praise
Speaker 2: choruses from Finney's day are like the classic old hymns
Speaker 2: in some churches, like Fanny Crosby eventually contributes to that tradition.
Speaker 2: She's not connected with Finny, but Amazing Grace is an
Speaker 2: example of that tradition. And you'll notice that many of
Speaker 2: many of the hymns in that style, done in that
Speaker 2: style are individualized in focus. They're they're talking about the
Speaker 2: grace that saved a wretch like me. It's about me. Now,
Speaker 2: that's interesting because the church music that Finny is reacting
Speaker 2: against is more holistic. The older hymns of the established
Speaker 2: congregations of his day are singing about an event in
Speaker 2: the life of Christ, or they're singing about what baptism
Speaker 2: does or something like that. It is it's a more
Speaker 2: universal thing. It's not a not an individual focus thing.
Speaker 2: And I've always thought that that is a very important thing. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: when when we look back at the second grade Awakening,
Speaker 2: it's far enough away that it's it's outside of the
Speaker 2: thinking of a lot of people who think of themselves
Speaker 2: as traditional believers. That's that's too far in the past
Speaker 2: for them to realize that this is the origin of
Speaker 2: some of these practices. Another important aspect which has a
Speaker 2: huge influence in the second great awakening is the social
Speaker 2: reforms that Finny brings into the pulpit and proclaims with
Speaker 2: his evangel while he's while he is teaching the gospel,
Speaker 2: he is also teaching for radical abolitionism, the immediate emancipation
Speaker 2: of the slaves in the United States, and other causes
Speaker 2: that we will we will see some have have Some
Speaker 2: have explained these things as a form of Christian socialism,
Speaker 2: so called Christian socialism. Finny goes off to Ohio. He's
Speaker 2: from New York. He spends most of his career in
Speaker 2: upstate New York, but he does go west into Ohio
Speaker 2: to found Oberlin College. If you advance the slide, we'll see,
Speaker 2: all right, just give me a second. Again, it's a
Speaker 2: little clunky, but so Oberlin College starts out as a
Speaker 2: revivalist minister's school of higher education for social reform and humanism.
Speaker 2: So this is a you could say it's it's evangelical
Speaker 2: in the sense that it's founded by evangelists, but in
Speaker 2: the context of annabellam America, this is a very progressive institution.
Speaker 2: From its start, Oberlin College is one of the first
Speaker 2: schools in the United States to have co ed students.
Speaker 2: To admit both male and female students, and it is
Speaker 2: one of the very first to have a racially integrated
Speaker 2: student body, so well before the Civil War. They're taking
Speaker 2: black students at Oberlin College, and this is something that
Speaker 2: not surprisingly Oberlin is extremely proud of these days. But
Speaker 2: true to their origin, Oberlin is known as one of
Speaker 2: the one of the liberal arts schools that are on
Speaker 2: the extreme left of things. Oberlin College was founded in
Speaker 2: part to spread abolitionist ideas, and Charles Finn is part
Speaker 2: of this. He says that these ideas are essential for
Speaker 2: the work of the Gospel to take place on earth.
Speaker 2: So if we don't have these social reforms popularized, then
Speaker 2: people are not living the Christian life. Now, I'm on
Speaker 2: your show, so I can say things here that I
Speaker 2: wouldn't necessarily say elsewhere, like in my class, for instance,
Speaker 2: this is not something that my students could handle very well.
Speaker 2: But the notion that radical abolitionism is absolutely necessary for
Speaker 2: one to be a Christian is a pernicious and new notion.
Speaker 2: The Bible is full of holy men who owned slaves,
Speaker 2: and this is this inclin inclutes the New Testament. We
Speaker 2: have the Book of Fileheman for instance where the apostle
Speaker 2: sends a runaway slave back to his owner and writes
Speaker 2: an epistle about the action. The Book of Filehemon does
Speaker 2: not instruct the man that owns Onisimus the slave to
Speaker 2: set the man free, even though both of them are Christians.
Speaker 2: It's merely explaining the circumstances, and the apostle Paul is
Speaker 2: sending the slave back to his master. This this sort
Speaker 2: of thing strikes modern Americans in a very strange way,
Speaker 2: but perhaps they're even more alarmed by the injunctions we
Speaker 2: see in several books in the New Testament. In two Peter,
Speaker 2: the apostle says, slaves, obey your masters, even the mean ones,
Speaker 2: even the froward ones, even the ones that aren't treating
Speaker 2: you well. And this is an injunction that comes right
Speaker 2: alongside children oby your parents, and wives obey your husbands,
Speaker 2: all three of which are hierarchical relationships. The Bible does
Speaker 2: not destroy those hierarchical relationships. The Bible teaches doctrines to
Speaker 2: reinforce those relationships. So this idea that Christians must be
Speaker 2: radical abolitionists, it's important, at least in the historical context here,
Speaker 2: this is not something that Christians have ever taught before,
Speaker 2: and I think I can just leave it at that.
Speaker 2: It's a novel new doctrine. Right.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because you and I had a conversation, you know,
Speaker 1: off air, just on the phone. And I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to turn this into a massive, you know, tangent, but
Speaker 1: it's about, I guess, the kind of a new saint
Speaker 1: in Christian circles of MLK, right, the idea that he
Speaker 1: is kind of this pre eminent example of what it
Speaker 1: is to be a Christian. You know, there's this kind
Speaker 1: of like syncratic gospel of you know, anti racist Christianity. Right,
Speaker 1: And you can have your own opinions on slavery, you know,
Speaker 1: you may or may not like it, but at the
Speaker 1: very least, like the widest I guess reading you can
Speaker 1: take is that the Bible is neutral on slavery, you know, right,
Speaker 1: And it's especially aggravating, you know, from a Protestant perspective,
Speaker 1: where this there is this doctrine of sola scripture, right,
Speaker 1: like only scripture, only scripture, just like going back to
Speaker 1: that and going back to that, but except on this
Speaker 1: one thing, you know. And so again I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to turn this into a tangent. But that's an interesting
Speaker 1: point and not something I'd considered so explicitly.
Speaker 2: Indeed, Well, it obviously, the institution of slavery has just
Speaker 2: caused endless problems for Americans just generally, and many many
Speaker 2: of our modern conflicts and agonizing attitudes sim back to
Speaker 2: our inability to deal with that problem and digest it
Speaker 2: and set it to rest, and that's very unfortunate for us.
Speaker 1: Well, it really is kind of like the the crack
Speaker 1: that runs through our society, you know, I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe at one point in time there could have been
Speaker 1: a peaceful resolution to that, but at this point, it
Speaker 1: just seems like there's too many people invested in eager
Speaker 1: and keeping that indeed, in that divide open and raw
Speaker 1: and kind of poking at that wound.
Speaker 2: There. There is obviously a lot of political hay to
Speaker 2: be made of it. There's a lot of money to
Speaker 2: be made of it, but we will go on. I
Speaker 2: think that it is very notable that I think it's
Speaker 2: the United States and Haiti are the only two countries
Speaker 2: that abolished the institution of slavery by violence and with
Speaker 2: no political plan for what happened afterwards. Of course, these
Speaker 2: these countries are very different from each other. In Haiti,
Speaker 2: there was there was kind of a wholesale slaughter that
Speaker 2: followed that that did not follow in the United States.
Speaker 2: Our slaughter was just armies of regions fighting and killing
Speaker 2: one another by the hundreds of thousands. But we will
Speaker 2: move on to more detail. Also about the second grade Awakening,
Speaker 2: I haven't gotten to the fun part yet, and we
Speaker 2: will skip along until we get to that. In the
Speaker 2: Second Grade Awakening, we see many examples of what early
Speaker 2: Christians called chileasm. We could use an English word for
Speaker 2: it and call it millennialism. Millennialism is utopian religion, religious
Speaker 2: belief that expects some kind of earthly expression of an
Speaker 2: ideal world. Now, this is in contrast to the kind
Speaker 2: of traditional religious expression that people like Charles Finny. Not
Speaker 2: to dump too hard on Charles Finny, I want to
Speaker 2: give the man his due, But people like Charles Finny
Speaker 2: were contrasting their evangel with Charles Finny did not like
Speaker 2: the modest position of traditional faith. Traditional religious belief believe
Speaker 2: it's a belief that salvation is a kind of mystery,
Speaker 2: and that is something that is accomplished ultimately by God,
Speaker 2: not by man. It is divine grace that works out
Speaker 2: the salvation of humanity. Human beings need to cooperate with
Speaker 2: this in some form or another. But this is a
Speaker 2: profound mystery that we also see in the Gospel. Christ
Speaker 2: says his kingdom is not of this world. Millennialism denies
Speaker 2: that statement of Christ and expects to see the Kingdom
Speaker 2: of God established on earth by man. Now they might say, oh,
Speaker 2: it's God working through them, but they expect to see
Speaker 2: evil purged from the world, or evil purge from their
Speaker 2: special community. Now this is an American tradition. Both the
Speaker 2: Quakers and Puritans in the North, as David Hackett Fisher
Speaker 2: points out, did expect to set up kinds of utopian communities.
Speaker 2: You may recall from early American history communes and communal
Speaker 2: experiments abolishing property and such were done in the South
Speaker 2: as well. Now, these things always failed very quickly, but
Speaker 2: the Colony of Georgia was set up as a utopian commune.
Speaker 2: Jamestown was originally a communist experiment with a master plan.
Speaker 2: But these things fizzled out very quickly because the incentives
Speaker 2: weren't right, the people were were not able to survive.
Speaker 2: So if we advance on to the next slide, we
Speaker 2: will will see some millennialism at work. Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2: Is this what you wanted? Or should I go to
Speaker 2: the next Yes? I actually didn't expect the rest of
Speaker 2: those notes. There just my fault. I've already said. New
Speaker 2: England began with this theological notion that the right belief
Speaker 2: could build the perfect society. So maybe the least interesting
Speaker 2: movement to come out of this, at least I find
Speaker 2: it to be the least interesting. Or the Unitarians, who
Speaker 2: in more recent times merged with the Universalists and became
Speaker 2: known as you you, the Unitarian Universalists. Now these are interesting,
Speaker 2: I suppose, and that they made the talking points of
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party their statement of faith. And if you
Speaker 2: want to know what Unitarians believe, you don't have to
Speaker 2: look very far. They like to post it on the
Speaker 2: fronts of their churches. They do not believe in any
Speaker 2: Christian creeds, unlike their Puritan forefathers. They don't believe that
Speaker 2: Christ was God. They don't believe he was born of
Speaker 2: a virgin. They don't believe that he died or rose
Speaker 2: again or ascended into heaven. They don't believe the Bible
Speaker 2: is the word of God. And you wonder why they
Speaker 2: might use a cross as a symbol at all. They
Speaker 2: kind of get they kind of moved away from a
Speaker 2: traditional presentation of a Christian cross and started using stylized
Speaker 2: monad or something. If you advanced the slide one more,
Speaker 2: or it's a good, good place for us to rest,
Speaker 2: here we go. I haven't seen one that says.
Speaker 1: All genders are whole, holy and good. I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand the meaning of it, but that's a new one
Speaker 1: even for me. Yeah, I get the feeling they change
Speaker 1: this pretty frequently versions of it myself, but the the.
Speaker 2: Marching orders are always changing on that front, I suppose.
Speaker 2: I'm also confused, like what's the point of even going
Speaker 2: to church? You know, like you're effectively just a social club.
Speaker 2: But that's probably not a no I really productive. I
Speaker 2: looked at a Unitarian I guess a prayer book of
Speaker 2: some sort that they had some kind of pew book
Speaker 2: at a Unitarian church, and I flipped through it just
Speaker 2: because I was curious, and I noticed prayer by Ralph
Speaker 2: Waldo Imberson. Oh, that's interesting, that said in church. And
Speaker 2: that's really interesting because the Transcendentalist movement of the American
Speaker 2: Humanists and things like that, that that is an American
Speaker 2: literary tradition, and there's there's something of style in that
Speaker 2: body of literature. But they they put it in a
Speaker 2: church pew and called it their faith, and I suppose
Speaker 2: it is a faith. This is this is a very
Speaker 2: politicized religion, such as it is. It's it was never
Speaker 2: very popular, though it does have a lot of important adherents.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to admit that John Adams was a Unitarian.
Speaker 2: I rather like John Adams President, John Adams of Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: John Quincy Adams, and surprisingly John Z. Calhoun of South Carolina.
Speaker 2: Oh that's incredibly surprising. Yeah, so there's there's kind of
Speaker 2: a diversity there. You know, you have some famous Southerners
Speaker 2: who are also Unitarians. But this was something that never
Speaker 2: got very far from the elites. So it looks to
Speaker 2: me like like a religion of the political class, the
Speaker 2: political elites. I knew some people who became Unitarian, and
Speaker 2: they definitely wanted to think of themselves as upper crust
Speaker 2: yet still religious, not believing any unpopular religious things to believe,
Speaker 2: only believing the most popular sorts of doctrines. That's one
Speaker 2: way of looking at it.
Speaker 1: In my personal experience. They seem to be kind of
Speaker 1: striver types, you know, the kind of people who want
Speaker 1: to be as high status as possible, and it seems
Speaker 1: to be a convenient way to attach themselves to all
Speaker 1: high status beliefs at once.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you win points everywhere by saying those slogans.
Speaker 2: Should I go to the next month? You don't get
Speaker 2: attacked for saying any of those things, right, Yes, of course,
Speaker 2: it's almost say I am with power. I I agree
Speaker 2: with power. So if you advance, we'll go on to
Speaker 2: something more interesting. Okay, so the second grade awakening. I
Speaker 2: I've looked for a more clear version of this map.
Speaker 2: I apologize this map is kind of blurry, but it's
Speaker 2: it's the best map of this sort that I have.
Speaker 2: You can see this, uh, this teal area, this blue
Speaker 2: green area. This is where most of this evangelist activity
Speaker 2: is going on. I have I have said before there
Speaker 2: are evangelists in the South, but they do seem to
Speaker 2: be doing something distinctly different just at the same time.
Speaker 2: In this in this region of the north where where
Speaker 2: most of this activity is taking place, most of the
Speaker 2: revival meetings are taking place, you see a bunch of
Speaker 2: special movements groups springing up. You see Shaker communes here
Speaker 2: on the map, you see a few. You see a
Speaker 2: few of these red boxes. The red represents Mormon activity
Speaker 2: and Mormon communities. The red lines also also illustrate the
Speaker 2: movement of the Mormons westward. Of course, they eventually end
Speaker 2: up in Utah, where most of them do. Also, we
Speaker 2: see other things illustrated on this map. There there are
Speaker 2: some famous communes like Brook Farm in Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne
Speaker 2: was part of that experiment that was a vegetarian commune
Speaker 2: that tried to eliminate private property. Another thing that you
Speaker 2: see marked on the map is the Foyerist phalanxes. This
Speaker 2: is after this is all establishments of a French utopian
Speaker 2: thinker named Fourier. And he was not a religious thinker,
Speaker 2: but he was something. He was a Communist thinker. Now
Speaker 2: this is before Karl Marx, which is important. He prefigures
Speaker 2: the Communists of eighteen forty eight and the Communist Manifesto.
Speaker 2: And he was not a religious thinker, but he imagined
Speaker 2: that he could solve all the world's problems through applied
Speaker 2: reason and scientific thinking. He said there was no problem
Speaker 2: that human beings could experience that could not be reasoned
Speaker 2: to a solution. So he's a thoroughgoing rationalist, and he
Speaker 2: imagined that in the future humanity would live in gigantic
Speaker 2: communal apartment buildings. It's a very curious thing. He was
Speaker 2: a prolific writer, and he had adherents here in the
Speaker 2: United States who were very motivated by the utopian millennialist
Speaker 2: spirit of the age and started selling all all that
Speaker 2: they had to buy spots in these experimental fall lengths settlements,
Speaker 2: and several of them actually built buildings and such some
Speaker 2: of them, some of them still exist. I understand if
Speaker 2: you ad advance, will continue. So another one of these
Speaker 2: utopian groups that try to get rid of all their
Speaker 2: religious ideas and focus on humanist, rationalist approaches to perfect
Speaker 2: peace and harmony and the end of evil were the
Speaker 2: followers of Robert Owen. Now this is peculiar and interesting.
Speaker 2: We see this as an Anglo American phenomenon. The Second
Speaker 2: Great Awakening does have its adherents over in England as well.
Speaker 2: But they find that they can get they can get
Speaker 2: financial support, and they can get people to go in
Speaker 2: with them in communal experiments and communes. Here in the
Speaker 2: United States. Whereas back in England these ideas are not
Speaker 2: so popular. In the United States, there are always wealthy
Speaker 2: New Englanders who are willing to finance things like this,
Speaker 2: these these utopian experiments. So Robert Owen, who is from
Speaker 2: I want to say, I want to say, he's from Wales.
Speaker 2: I don't think he's from England. I think he's from Wales.
Speaker 2: But he's from He's from the British Empire. He's from
Speaker 2: Great Britain. He comes to Indiana and he starts a
Speaker 2: commune there. Now, this has a lot in common with
Speaker 2: the the Foaeis Phalanxes that that I just talked about.
Speaker 2: Robert Owen imagined that everyone would live in a giant
Speaker 2: apartment building. There would be no there would be no religion.
Speaker 2: It would be totally peaceful, there would be no crime,
Speaker 2: and everyone's lives would be planned so there would be
Speaker 2: no conflict. We see this kind of thing done again
Speaker 2: and again during this period. But Owen wanted to eliminate
Speaker 2: all religious education, which is a very important aspect, and
Speaker 2: he blamed this on the failure of his commune. If
Speaker 2: you advance the slide one click, we'll see a picture
Speaker 2: of Robert Owen. There we go. Yes, he was from Wales.
Speaker 2: I remembered it right, Okay, So Robert Owen he believed
Speaker 2: that the Christian teaching of the sinfulness of man and
Speaker 2: the fall of man was actually the source of human misbehavior,
Speaker 2: and he was. Though he failed as a utopian, he
Speaker 2: became a pioneer in public education. And I I know,
Speaker 2: I know critics of Marxism have cited Robert Owen as
Speaker 2: an inspiration to Karl Marx and his advocacy of public education.
Speaker 2: I don't know that Marx himself ever cited Robert Owen
Speaker 2: for that, but it's but it is. It's a coincidence anyway,
Speaker 2: both Marx and Robert Owen both both said that there
Speaker 2: should be universal public education. Shall I go to the
Speaker 2: next slide? Yes, go right ahead. So the Nashoba community
Speaker 2: is another small phenomenon. It did not take off, but
Speaker 2: it's it's another instance of an Anglo a Scottish woman
Speaker 2: in this case, who came to the United States found
Speaker 2: funding with a Meremerican elites who were willing to fund
Speaker 2: these utopian experiments. Francis Wright went to Memphis, Tennessee, and
Speaker 2: had had a lot of abolitionist goals and had a
Speaker 2: lot of abolitionists enthusiasts who are funding this effort. She
Speaker 2: went to Memphis, Tennessee. She bought a derelict plantation and
Speaker 2: began buying slaves. Now, this is a very strange thing
Speaker 2: for a radical abolitionists to do, but she intended to
Speaker 2: found a utopian community with her slaves, with the goal
Speaker 2: of making enough profit on the plantation to send them
Speaker 2: to African colonies. Now this is a gradualist approach. This
Speaker 2: is not a radical abolitionist approach. It's a gradualist approach.
Speaker 2: What's radical is the other things that Francis Right attempted
Speaker 2: to do with this experiment. Like Robert Owen, Francis Wright
Speaker 2: was also a radical atheist, so she attempted to get
Speaker 2: the slaves to stop practicing religion, to stop believing in Jesus. So,
Speaker 2: these slaves had been in the United States for a
Speaker 2: few generations for the most part. There are exceptions we're
Speaker 2: talking about this period of history, but most American slaves
Speaker 2: were born into slavery. Most American slaves were not brought
Speaker 2: to the United States. The number of slaves born in
Speaker 2: the United States have vastly outnumbers the number of slaves
Speaker 2: that were brought to the United States in slave transportation
Speaker 2: in the Middle Passage in the Atlantic, but Francis Wright
Speaker 2: she attempted to de christianize them. This did not go
Speaker 2: overwell and it did not seem to take At least
Speaker 2: Francis Wright did not think her efforts made much impact.
Speaker 2: Another thing that she did was she preached something that
Speaker 2: she became very infamous for on the lecture circuit. She
Speaker 2: preached free love to her slaves. She attempted to abolish marriage.
Speaker 2: Now evidently she had more success along these lines, but
Speaker 2: her success destroyed whatever organization she had at this experiment.
Speaker 2: The slaves all began fighting amongst themselves, and order in
Speaker 2: cohesion totally broke down at the Nashova experiment and the
Speaker 2: whole thing had to be dissolved. She ended up having
Speaker 2: to sell the slaves again, which was traumatic I think
Speaker 2: for everyone involved, including Francis Right by the way, I
Speaker 2: mean she she failed and realized that she became insolvent,
Speaker 2: which is why she had to turn to the auctioneer.
Speaker 2: If you advance once you'll see a picture of Francis
Speaker 2: Wright here. She is. She's lionized by feminists these days,
Speaker 2: is what I understand.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because I think I've actually seen when when
Speaker 1: when that portrait came up. I think I've actually seen
Speaker 1: that portrait before in college, so I've at least seen
Speaker 1: her probably in that context, you know, as some kind
Speaker 1: of like feminist icon.
Speaker 2: I actually have a scholarly interest in these things, and
Speaker 2: I'm trying to track down sources on these on these things,
Speaker 2: and I want to get a book of Francis Wright's
Speaker 2: lectures because I've never read them. I'm sure they're on
Speaker 2: archive top work or something that I just haven't gone
Speaker 2: to find them. Okay, So the next group that we
Speaker 2: have is the Shakers. Now this is a very peculiar group.
Speaker 2: They started out as a sect of the Quakers. So
Speaker 2: the Quakers, you must understand, are much older than all
Speaker 2: the other groups that we're talking about here. They do
Speaker 2: not date back to the second grade Awakening. They're actually
Speaker 2: much older than that. And we have a lot of
Speaker 2: illustrious members of this sect. William Penn who founds Pennsylvania
Speaker 2: for instance. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is founded by the Quakers. The
Speaker 2: Quakers start out as kind of a Pentecostal sort of sect.
Speaker 2: They're known to have these really wild religious emotional experiences,
Speaker 2: which is why they are called Quakers. They would quake,
Speaker 2: their bodies would shake in religious ecstasy, which is why
Speaker 2: they earned that name. They called themselves the Society of Friends. Now,
Speaker 2: though they started out with this Pentecostal sort of experience,
Speaker 2: they became quietest over time. So the Quaker's service did
Speaker 2: not involve any leaders. These people denied all social hierarchy,
Speaker 2: so there was no leader of the Quakers east in
Speaker 2: theory that they had no pastors. In the Quaker meeting,
Speaker 2: the men and women would separate, as you see here
Speaker 2: in this illustration. They would separate in the Quaker meeting house,
Speaker 2: the men on one side, the women on the other,
Speaker 2: and they would sit down. There was no order of service.
Speaker 2: There were no prayers, there were no creeds. There was
Speaker 2: no Bible reading until someone felt motivated to get up
Speaker 2: and say something. And sometimes in a meeting and a
Speaker 2: Quaker meeting, no one would say anything and eventually everyone
Speaker 2: would go home. They had no symbolism, no art. Quakers
Speaker 2: do not display the cross, they do not practice baptism,
Speaker 2: they do not believe in the Trinity. So Quakers, though
Speaker 2: they are older than these groups, we should see immediately
Speaker 2: these are very radical, non traditional Christians at best. I
Speaker 2: do not think that you could say that anyone who
Speaker 2: denies the deity of Christ and the Trinity of God
Speaker 2: can be a Christian.
Speaker 1: I actually have some experience with current day Quakers, and
Speaker 1: it's interesting because they have effectively left behind the concept
Speaker 1: of God altogether. They refer to the light, you know,
Speaker 1: and when the light leaves you, you know, you can
Speaker 1: you can speak in their service, you know. In otherwise
Speaker 1: it's just dead, silent the whole time. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: because it just so happens that that that God happens
Speaker 1: to listen to a lot of NPR, you know, And
Speaker 1: so that's that's tend or the light rather and that
Speaker 1: tends to be uh what comes up in services. But anyway,
Speaker 1: you were saying.
Speaker 2: Well, the the Shakers are distinct from the Quakers. The
Speaker 2: Quakers find they find shelter in their colony here in
Speaker 2: the United States. Everywhere else the Quakers go they meet
Speaker 2: with persecution. But this this involves their radical belief against
Speaker 2: all hierarchical institutions. So people that convert to Quakerism, disrespect
Speaker 2: their parents and get thrown out of their homes, can't
Speaker 2: abide with their family members anymore. They attack public officials
Speaker 2: and say, you have no right to make rulings on anything,
Speaker 2: You have no right to judge anything, you have no
Speaker 2: right to make laws on anything, because everyone is equal,
Speaker 2: which sounds ought to sound familiar to us. I think
Speaker 2: that it was Curtis Jarvin who claims that Quakerism is
Speaker 2: the official religion of the United States. And I have
Speaker 2: always loved that remark. That has always struck me as
Speaker 2: true somehow, because they do just as you say. They
Speaker 2: talk about the light that leads every believer to his
Speaker 2: own vision of goodness or truth. So it's a very personalized,
Speaker 2: individualized sort of experience with Quakers. But all that to say,
Speaker 2: the Shakers, they split from the Quakers. The Shakers are
Speaker 2: founded by a woman that calls herself Mother Ann Lee.
Speaker 2: Now she is another Britisher, like like William Penn. She
Speaker 2: comes to America from England, and she's a She is
Speaker 2: a curious figure. Evidently she had a very terrible marriage
Speaker 2: and was something of a mystic and a strange person,
Speaker 2: like a a non traditional sort of woman, r wife
Speaker 2: and eventually gets rid of her husband. She separates from
Speaker 2: her husband after having several several children that die very early,
Speaker 2: so she she experiences pregnancy and birth her children die.
Speaker 2: This seems very traumatic for her, and she has visions
Speaker 2: and mystical experiences, and she begins teaching in the Quaker
Speaker 2: meetinghouse where women are allowed to get up and speak,
Speaker 2: where women preach. This is something the Quakers are very
Speaker 2: famous for. Us is a very controversial thing, and Mother
Speaker 2: Anne Lee proclaims to her followers that Christ has already
Speaker 2: come back, that Christ has returned to Earth, that the
Speaker 2: Kingdom of Heaven is now and that no one is
Speaker 2: to be married anymore, and no one is to own
Speaker 2: anything anymore, and that they are going to live a
Speaker 2: serene life with no evil. And she also teaches as
Speaker 2: opposed to the quietest mode of the Quakers, where they
Speaker 2: just sit in silence, she teaches ritual dancing, so the
Speaker 2: Shakers people that join this sect are known to dance
Speaker 2: ritually together. Now this becomes very popular during the Second
Speaker 2: Grade Awakening. Mother ann Lee lives well before the Second
Speaker 2: Greade Awakening and dies here in America, but the Shakers
Speaker 2: sect only finds an audience during the Second Great Awakening,
Speaker 2: and it becomes a popular commune and unlike the other
Speaker 2: communes like the Owenites in the Nashoba community and the
Speaker 2: full lengths that are set up here and there. The
Speaker 2: Shakers actually make a go at this. It seems to
Speaker 2: be a successful experiment, at least to all these people live.
Speaker 2: This is an example of a Shaker village. You may
Speaker 2: have encountered Shaker style furniture that comes from the Shakers.
Speaker 2: They invented that style. Here's a Shaker workshop. You can
Speaker 2: see that they have very minimalist sort of approach, which
Speaker 2: corresponds to their Quaker heritage, which is very minimalist. You
Speaker 2: can see that the chairs on the walls here. These
Speaker 2: communities are now empty because the Shakers all forswore marriage
Speaker 2: to join these communes. They did not marry, they did
Speaker 2: not have children. Their only way to keep their sect
Speaker 2: going was to recruit from the outside, and after a
Speaker 2: certain point no one was interested in joining anymore. They
Speaker 2: basically lived a monastic existence. You can see they did
Speaker 2: have really remarkable craftsmanship and grace in the things that
Speaker 2: they built. Another another funny little point about the Shakers.
Speaker 2: They were the first people to be granted a conscientious
Speaker 2: objector status. When Lincoln was looking for soldiers for his war,
Speaker 2: he did not try recruiting amongst the Quakers who were
Speaker 2: all pacifists, strict pacifists, and refused to fight. And this
Speaker 2: is the origin of the conscientious objector status in the
Speaker 2: United States military.
Speaker 1: This is actually, this is actually my favorite, my favorite
Speaker 1: part of this, of this lecture. And even though it's
Speaker 1: been I guess the best part of a decade. Now
Speaker 1: I remember this community in particular. It's just one that
Speaker 1: always sticks in my brain. But anyway where you introduced them.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, this is usually the favorite of my high
Speaker 2: school students. So the Oneida Community was founded in eighteen
Speaker 2: forty eight, coincidentally the year the Communist Manifesto is published,
Speaker 2: eighteen forty eight, such an eventful year. It's founded by
Speaker 2: John Humphrey Noise, who is from Brattleborough, Vermont, so southern Vermont.
Speaker 2: John Humphrey Noise goes to Harvard he Oh, he meets
Speaker 2: William Lloyd Garrison, so his career begins as a radical
Speaker 2: among the radicals. He is a very vocal abolitionist in Boston,
Speaker 2: and he's friends with William Lloyd Garrison, who spends the
Speaker 2: rest of his life doing this kind of agitation. But
Speaker 2: Noise decides to return to Vermont. He studies theology in college,
Speaker 2: and when he goes back to Vermont, he starts publishing
Speaker 2: a newspaper. Now, it's it's really strange. People people in
Speaker 2: this day read huge amounts of material, even compared to
Speaker 2: our set. I'm just I'm just dumbfounded at the number
Speaker 2: of newspapers and the fact that that people could write
Speaker 2: so much as to publish a newspaper just blows my mind.
Speaker 2: But he publishes a newspaper and and kind of lives
Speaker 2: on the income for a while, which is also just stupendous.
Speaker 2: Like there are people wanting to buy his writing, like
Speaker 2: everyone wants to buy reading material everywhere, even even crackpot
Speaker 2: reading material like like from John Humphrey Noise. He becomes
Speaker 2: known as a perfectionist and preaches the novel doctrine that
Speaker 2: Christians can do no evil, rather like the Shakers. John
Speaker 2: Humphrey Noyes also believes that the Kingdom of God is now,
Speaker 2: we aren't anticipating it, it is right now, and that
Speaker 2: true Christians commit no sin at all, hence his his uh,
Speaker 2: his moniker perfectionism. Now he has two close friends, a
Speaker 2: young couple and and a third man, I believe, I
Speaker 2: believe this is how the story goes. So, so he
Speaker 2: has like two other men and one one married woman
Speaker 2: in his set who is married to one of these men.
Speaker 2: The woman ends up having an affair with the single
Speaker 2: man in his little sect. Now at this point, he
Speaker 2: has a church of of four okay, so he has
Speaker 2: a very very small group, but he's still publishing this
Speaker 2: newspaper of publicizing his ideas. John Humphrey Noise says, well,
Speaker 2: no one here has done anything wrong. We are all
Speaker 2: members of this perfect church, and this is not adultery.
Speaker 2: But he also realizes this presents a unique problem, so
Speaker 2: he formulates a new doctrine called complex marriage. Now, obviously,
Speaker 2: the woman's husband is not okay with his wife having
Speaker 2: this affair. She assures him that everything is fine because
Speaker 2: she's a perfect Christian and he should not feel so
Speaker 2: bad about this that he might be in sin for
Speaker 2: feeling bad about this. John Humphrey Noise sides with her
Speaker 2: and says, you should not feel any jealousy. That is
Speaker 2: evil to feel jealousy. Christians should not feel jealousy anymore.
Speaker 2: And so he comes up with his doctrine of complex marriage.
Speaker 2: In the perfectionist Church of John Humphrey Noise. All adult
Speaker 2: men are married to all adult women. Now that doesn't
Speaker 2: mean that they just swap partners every night. No, John
Speaker 2: Humphrey Noise must choose all the couplings. So John Humphrey
Speaker 2: Noise ends up coming up with a complex system of
Speaker 2: eugenics to purify the breed in his church, so dysgenic members,
Speaker 2: ugly people, unattractive people, less intelligent people do not get
Speaker 2: to procreate. John Humphrey Noyes preaches his position of complex
Speaker 2: marriage along with a h a teaching of male continents
Speaker 2: which we need not elaborate on. Basically, the men needed
Speaker 2: permission to UH participate in a an act that could
Speaker 2: be pro creative. And once once he had had formulated
Speaker 2: this this uh eugenics philosophy. John Humphrey Noise was was
Speaker 2: known to be a very popular amongst the new female recruits. Yes,
Speaker 2: so this is this is a very strange story because
Speaker 2: he he had a certain kind of popularity. They were
Speaker 2: chased out of Vermont when it became public that his
Speaker 2: group was engaged in wife swapping. Basically, he was chased
Speaker 2: out of Vermont with threats of violence. He went to
Speaker 2: the town of Oneida, New York, which I think is
Speaker 2: in the Hudson River Valley. I think it is. I
Speaker 2: think it's near Syracuse if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, they
Speaker 2: bought land and of one of his new recruits to
Speaker 2: his church was the owner of a small industrial concern.
Speaker 2: So the whole community, his church community, built a manor
Speaker 2: house to live in. They all lived in the same house.
Speaker 2: Again this idea of the future of humanity in a
Speaker 2: humanist socialist harmony. Everyone lived in giant apartment buildings together,
Speaker 2: renovating the sexual mores, renovating their vision of private property,
Speaker 2: or doing away with their vision of private property. They
Speaker 2: they found prosperity in this industrial concern. They actually made
Speaker 2: a fortune selling, manufacturing and selling animal traps, so like
Speaker 2: beaver traps and things like that. That was their original thing.
Speaker 2: But they but they got to they got to manufacturing
Speaker 2: flat wear and dishes. Eventually, if you advanced the slide,
Speaker 2: this is a photograph of the Oneida community. So Oneida
Speaker 2: is still known as a as a manufacturer of flatwear
Speaker 2: and such. But this cult did not survive the death
Speaker 2: of John Humphrey Noise. After his death, people kind of
Speaker 2: they took the stock in this corporation that they were
Speaker 2: a part of. They took dividends from it, but they stopped,
Speaker 2: they stopped practicing this religion. Interestingly, John Humphrey Nois's own
Speaker 2: son called himself an atheist and grew up in this
Speaker 2: community and was not ostracized for his about atheism. But
Speaker 2: by the time he was more or less left in
Speaker 2: charge of the thing, he dissolved it. The religious component
Speaker 2: did not survive the generation, but the corporation survived the religion,
Speaker 2: which is also curious. Shall I go to the next one?
Speaker 2: Cored ahead, we find a bunch of radical vegetarian evangelists
Speaker 2: during this time, which I'm very amused with. One of
Speaker 2: the most famous is doctor Sylvester Graham. Doctor Graham was
Speaker 2: interested in two things that he made a great deal
Speaker 2: of during his life. Firstly, he preached far and wide
Speaker 2: on the dangers of masturbation, so that was that was
Speaker 2: one of his first pet peeves. The second was he
Speaker 2: believed that all of all human cuisines were wrong. Everyone
Speaker 2: in the world was eating wrong, and if people would
Speaker 2: simply adopt a pure grain based vegetarian diet, then we
Speaker 2: could eliminate a substantial amount of evil from the world.
Speaker 2: So doctor Graham was something of a granola fanatic, and
Speaker 2: that's that's actually where granola comes from. It It comes
Speaker 2: from vegetarian evangelist preachers who combined religious fervor and the
Speaker 2: Gospel with their dietary ideas. Something all Americans should should
Speaker 2: recognize as commonplace. This is a very American phenomenon to
Speaker 2: to pick up radical new diets as a pseudo religious fad.
Speaker 2: It's a very American thing to do. We we live
Speaker 2: in it and and we don't necessarily realize that's that's
Speaker 2: kind of strange, but it strikes other people from other
Speaker 2: parts of the world as strange. And I enjoy seeing
Speaker 2: that as strange. I want to think I've come out
Speaker 2: of that. I don't live in that world. But doctor Graham,
Speaker 2: he founded the American Vegetarian Society. He preached against the
Speaker 2: use of coffee, tea, tobacco, and milk. It's very interesting,
Speaker 2: and he popularized the use of a very special flour
Speaker 2: made of whole grain for his followers. And what's very
Speaker 2: interesting is doctor Graham's special diet did not survive, but
Speaker 2: his special flower survived. The Graham Cracker is an American
Speaker 2: thing that came out of this movement, and of course
Speaker 2: none of us eat Graham crackers, thinking of the weird
Speaker 2: religious sect that spawned it. But nevertheless it did come
Speaker 2: from doctor Graham. You may continue, all right, the Miller writes,
Speaker 2: this is another fun group. William Miller was a Baptist pastor.
Speaker 2: He published tracts like you see here popularized these things.
Speaker 2: William Miller, after long study of the Bible, decided that
Speaker 2: he knew the day and the hour that Christ would return.
Speaker 2: So he said the end of the world would take
Speaker 2: place in eighteen forty three. I believe, taking thirty three
Speaker 2: according to your sides. But oh, maybe I get Maybe
Speaker 2: I got that.
Speaker 1: Wrong because eighteen forty three in this in this newspaper clipping,
Speaker 1: so it must just be.
Speaker 2: Within the slide. Maybe it's wrong in the slide. My
Speaker 2: mistake there. I'll have to touch that up. So William Miller
Speaker 2: encouraged his followers based on his mathematical work with the
Speaker 2: Old Testament. He encouraged his followers to sell everything that
Speaker 2: they had, dress in white robes, and go to high
Speaker 2: a high place, a hilltop, so that they could watch
Speaker 2: the return of Christ in the sky and watch the
Speaker 2: judgment of wicked humanity, and they would see the establishment
Speaker 2: of the new Heaven and the new Earth. So this
Speaker 2: was known as the Great Disappointment, ironically by detractors who
Speaker 2: came up with this term for this day. Millerites mostly
Speaker 2: in New York, which is where this movement was most popular.
Speaker 2: New York, Ohio, Vermont, Massachusetts. It kind of spans that area.
Speaker 2: They sold all that they had. They were preaching to
Speaker 2: their neighbors to repair, for the Kingdom of Heaven is
Speaker 2: at hand. You know, they're they're using lots of biblical injunctions.
Speaker 2: They go up onto hilltops and nothing happens, and they're disbelieving.
Speaker 2: Neighbors mock them for it. Now, surprisingly this is not
Speaker 2: the end of the Miller Rights. William Miller says, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I got it wrong by a year, and some some
Speaker 2: go up to the hilltop the next year, but again
Speaker 2: nothing happens. They do not see the judgment of humanity,
Speaker 2: and once again they are disgraced. But rather than disband
Speaker 2: this movement, Miller's followers develop something new and something lasting.
Speaker 2: They develop a denomination, if you will, that is still
Speaker 2: with us today, the Seventh Day Adventists. Now William Miller
Speaker 2: does not come up with with many of the peculiar
Speaker 2: teachings of this group. It is his followers who come
Speaker 2: up with many of these peculiar teachings. In particular, another
Speaker 2: woman mystic. There are a number of female mystics that
Speaker 2: are involved with in the foundation of these groups. And
Speaker 2: I forget this woman's name, but she sees a vision
Speaker 2: of the Ten Commandments, and it's based on this vision
Speaker 2: that the Seventh day Adventists worship on Saturday instead of Sunday.
Speaker 1: Her name was Ellen Gould White.
Speaker 2: There we Go, There we Go, one of their prophetesses.
Speaker 2: So she popularizes this this new practice that they should
Speaker 2: keep the Jewish Sabbath, and Seventh day Adventists have many
Speaker 2: dietary restrictions because they attempt to follow Jewish dietary practices.
Speaker 2: They attempt to keep kosher. Now, because Seventh Day Adventists
Speaker 2: are not in urban areas, typically they tend to be
Speaker 2: in rural areas in the countryside, they frequently just practice
Speaker 2: vegetarianism rather than attempt to find kosher prepared foods. But
Speaker 2: because they are so invested in a special practice of food,
Speaker 2: the Seventh day Adventists started food companies. So doctor Kellogg
Speaker 2: of Battle Creek, Michigan, a follower of doctor Graham up
Speaker 2: in Connecticut. Doctor Kellogg becomes a Seventh Day Adventist and
Speaker 2: invents the cornflake. Now, doctor Kellogg is also following some
Speaker 2: Grammite ideas. In addition to being a Seventh Day Adventist,
Speaker 2: doctor Kellogg is also a vegan like doctor Graham was.
Speaker 2: So doctor Kellogg invinced the corn flake as a breakfast cereal.
Speaker 2: He imagines and teaches. Now, this is not what Seventh
Speaker 2: Day Adventists claim, but this this has more in common
Speaker 2: with what doctor Graham claimed. But Kellogg believes if he
Speaker 2: can change the American diet to make it vegetarian one day,
Speaker 2: one meal a day, that he could mathematically reduce the
Speaker 2: amount of evil in the world by one third. So
Speaker 2: he popularized his corn flakes. And this is one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why Americans have two visions of breakfast food.
Speaker 2: We have the cereal thanks to doctor Kellogg, the cereal breakfast. Now,
Speaker 2: Doctor Kellogg, being a vegan, would not suggest milk with this.
Speaker 2: He wanted people to eat it with water. But Americans
Speaker 2: have more taste than that, and so we eat the
Speaker 2: cereal with milk, of course, But that that was doctor
Speaker 2: Kellogg's idea. Another another famous Seventh Day Adventist food maker
Speaker 2: is the founders of Little Debbie Cakes, which are made
Speaker 2: according to Jewish ceremonial law. Strangely enough, because their Seventh
Speaker 2: Day Adventists, I think I think the writers of the
Speaker 2: epistles would call them judaizers. Are ready to go into
Speaker 2: the next one, Yes, go right ahead right. Another another
Speaker 2: unusual group here is the Christian Scientists, founded by Mary
Speaker 2: Baker Eddie, who was from New Hampshire. Mary Baker Eddie
Speaker 2: started a franchise of health spas. These are these are
Speaker 2: what is the word I'm looking for? They're kind of
Speaker 2: like resorts asylums. An asylum might be the word I'm
Speaker 2: looking for. It doesn't sound quite right. Anyway, There we go.
Speaker 2: A sanitarium. Sorry for that, my brain just just stopped working.
Speaker 2: Sanitarium sorts of organizations where people would go for rest cures.
Speaker 2: She was a student of innovative interpretations of the Bible.
Speaker 2: She ends up writing this book Science and Health. Now,
Speaker 2: if you look carefully at this, you can see she
Speaker 2: wrote the book before she was married. The name on
Speaker 2: the book is Glover. She was Mary Baker Glover Eddie,
Speaker 2: so she became She married mister Eddie and took the
Speaker 2: name Eddie. But she wrote this book Science and Health
Speaker 2: as a key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddie is
Speaker 2: what we would call a gnostic. She believed that the
Speaker 2: physical world was an illusion. We do not have bodies.
Speaker 2: According to miss Eddie, the physical world does not exist. Therefore,
Speaker 2: if you have an ailment in your body, you need
Speaker 2: to believe that your body is not real, that you
Speaker 2: were actually a healthy Christian soul. Now, to be a
Speaker 2: Christian in missus Eddie's formulation means to deny the incarnation
Speaker 2: of our Lord. She did not believe that Christ had
Speaker 2: a body either. Okay, so this is not traditional Christianity
Speaker 2: at all. This is gnosticism. This is something that was
Speaker 2: condemned in the first century by the Apostolic fathers. The
Speaker 2: denial of the incarnation is one of the earliest Christian heresies.
Speaker 2: But Mary Baker Eddie was a gnostic. She denied the incarnation,
Speaker 2: and she said that all cures were based in faith.
Speaker 2: So you just had to believe properly and you would
Speaker 2: feel no pain and presumably experienced no evil. If you
Speaker 2: advance and take a look at Christian Science reading rooms.
Speaker 2: This is what they call the mother Church. This is
Speaker 2: the largest of the Christian science reading rooms. It's in Boston, Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: which is where it is based. This had its day.
Speaker 2: I think they do not publicize the numbers of their members,
Speaker 2: but it really does seem to be in sharp decline
Speaker 2: at this point. Lots of Christian science reading rooms have
Speaker 2: closed and been converted into into Christian churches usually. But
Speaker 2: one thing that you note here is the lack of symbolism,
Speaker 2: the centrality of a podium for a speaker. This is
Speaker 2: a very intellectual experience and that is something that you
Speaker 2: can recognize about the Christian scientists found it as they
Speaker 2: were in New England. They correspond to the Puritan tradition
Speaker 2: of religion as an intellectual exercise, minimizing the importance of sacraments,
Speaker 2: say which Puritans were. Puritans were very very focused on
Speaker 2: the on the sermon, all right?
Speaker 1: The uh, the way by what you you go through
Speaker 1: slides on stream yards is a little messy.
Speaker 2: What are you?
Speaker 1: Oh? What's okay? We should be good? Sorry about that,
Speaker 1: No trouble.
Speaker 2: All right. Now, Now we get to our our final
Speaker 2: experience in this in this overview and that is the Mormons.
Speaker 2: They are certainly the largest, most important product of the
Speaker 2: Second Great Awakening, the most perhaps the most important American
Speaker 2: made religious innovation. Now, of course, the Mormons are all
Speaker 2: over the world, based in the in the most unusual place,
Speaker 2: based over in Utah. They're running a kind of global church. Now,
Speaker 2: and it's such a unique story. It does, it does
Speaker 2: merit some in depth uh, in depth storytelling here Mormon.
Speaker 2: The Mormon church is called Mormons by outsiders. The adherence
Speaker 2: to this church call it the Church of Jesus Christ
Speaker 2: of Latter day Saints. It is founded by the the
Speaker 2: LDS prophet founder Joseph Smith of Vermont, another New Englander.
Speaker 2: We see. Joseph Smith starts out a very interesting career.
Speaker 2: He's very interested in deavening rods, so he has magical
Speaker 2: sticks that he uses to find things buried in the ground. Now,
Speaker 2: this is this is a very interesting practice. I don't
Speaker 2: know the origins of it. This is presumably something very old.
Speaker 2: I had a relation that used devening rods to find
Speaker 2: oil and gas down here in Louisiana. And he was
Speaker 2: one of my favorite relatives. I really love this guy.
Speaker 2: He was He was a real character. I love my
Speaker 2: uncle Joe. He tried getting in touch with me right
Speaker 2: before he died, and I still I still regret that
Speaker 2: I didn't reconnect with him. I didn't know that he
Speaker 2: was about to die, obviously, but I loved that guy.
Speaker 2: But anyway, there are other people that do stuff with
Speaker 2: devening rods. But Joseph Smith had a reputation for looking
Speaker 2: for buried treasure. He lived in what is called the
Speaker 2: Burned Over District. Now this is this area of intense
Speaker 2: reformist activity during the Second Great Awakening. You have lots
Speaker 2: of abolitionist radicals that are starting churches in the name
Speaker 2: of abolitionist politics. You have Miller Rights, you have utopian communes,
Speaker 2: and all sorts of curious things going on. Joseph Smith
Speaker 2: writes a very interesting introduction to the Book of Mormon,
Speaker 2: which is worth your time. I take this man seriously,
Speaker 2: and I don't know what's going on with him. I
Speaker 2: am not a Mormon, and I'm not sympathetic to Mormon theology.
Speaker 2: I categorically reject it. But that does not mean that
Speaker 2: I think Joseph Smith was a liar, and I would
Speaker 2: beg I beg your indulgence on the seeming paradox of that.
Speaker 2: I happen to believe people can have mystical experiences and
Speaker 2: that not not all mystical experiences come from God. Okay,
Speaker 2: they can come from lying spirit spirits too, which is
Speaker 2: why Christians are commanded to test the spirits and uh
Speaker 2: not go find found their own religions and such. Christians
Speaker 2: aren't allowed to do that. But Joseph Smith writes about
Speaker 2: growing up in western New York State and going to
Speaker 2: revival meetings, and he writes very sincerely about this that
Speaker 2: it made him very confused, and it made his neighbors
Speaker 2: very confused. Smith says that after years of Revivalist meetings
Speaker 2: and the foundations of various churches that claim different doctrines
Speaker 2: in different practices, he was left thinking that religion was discredited,
Speaker 2: that religion was not something for serious people, that Christianity
Speaker 2: was a confused mess. And this is I think a
Speaker 2: good a good capstone to our investigation here, because what
Speaker 2: are the results of these things. I think it does
Speaker 2: discredit faith. I think it does discredit faithful people. It
Speaker 2: does discredit religious tradition as such. Even though it is
Speaker 2: a modernist thing, it's built in a rejection of tradition.
Speaker 2: We might say that that's another critique, that it's not
Speaker 2: actually traditional at all, But Justice Smith's observation is I
Speaker 2: think very sincere and important in these circumstances. Joseph Smith
Speaker 2: says that he received a vision of God eventually. I think.
Speaker 2: I think at first it is an angel named Moroni
Speaker 2: who speaks to him, and then God the Father and
Speaker 2: God the Son speak to him. Now, in the the
Speaker 2: Mormon understanding, there is no trinity. These people do not
Speaker 2: believe in the trinity of God. They believe that Jesus
Speaker 2: is the literal son of God the Father through a
Speaker 2: female who is spiritual. I believe not. It is not
Speaker 2: that they aren't talking about the Virgin Mary in this context.
Speaker 2: Is something else anyway? This is this is a Mormon
Speaker 2: artwork of the young Joseph's Smith conversing with God the
Speaker 2: Father and God the Son. He receives in these visions
Speaker 2: instruction that the Church, the Christian Church, has gone wrong
Speaker 2: ever since the time of the Apostles, so all of
Speaker 2: Western Christianity is wrong. That the church ceased to exist.
Speaker 2: The Church of Christ founded at Pentecost ceased to exist.
Speaker 2: According to the Mormons, this means that the Catholics, the Orthodox,
Speaker 2: the Lutherans, the Baptists. They're all wrong. None of them
Speaker 2: understand the Bible correctly. None of them are practicing the
Speaker 2: religion of Christ. And Joseph Smith is appointed to restore
Speaker 2: the Church of Christ in America, and he's to do
Speaker 2: this with a particular American source. So the angel Moroney
Speaker 2: leads Joseph Smith to a hilltop in Vermont, in southern Vermont,
Speaker 2: where is buried golden plates inscribed with something Joseph Smith
Speaker 2: describes as reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. That this is the site
Speaker 2: in southern Vermont. This is the hill where the Mormons
Speaker 2: have built a monument to commemorate the finding of the
Speaker 2: Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith. Now this is a
Speaker 2: very interesting document, or it pretends to be a historical
Speaker 2: ancient document. Joseph Smith said that this was the record
Speaker 2: of Jews who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean before Christ
Speaker 2: and had established a pre Columbian continental civilization in what
Speaker 2: is now the United States, and had been utterly exterminated
Speaker 2: to a man by the people who are now Native Americans.
Speaker 2: So there were no Jews left in America by the
Speaker 2: time Columbus and the Anglo colonists arrive. All right, he's
Speaker 2: not and he's not saying that Native Americans are Jews.
Speaker 2: Though Native Americans have always had a the Mormons have
Speaker 2: always been very interested in Native Americans for this reason.
Speaker 2: The Book of Mormon is the record of the last Mormon,
Speaker 2: or the last Jewish patriarch, whose name is Mormon. He
Speaker 2: writes the story of his people and buries it. Now
Speaker 2: what makes this part of particular importance. Not only are
Speaker 2: these Jewish people, but Christ visited them. The Mormons believe
Speaker 2: Christ had a ministry in Palestine and that Christ had
Speaker 2: a ministry in America to his Jewish tribes here in
Speaker 2: what is now the United States. So Christ had two
Speaker 2: ministries on earth, according to the Mormons. And that's why
Speaker 2: they call the Book of Mormon another gospel of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: They claim it is a lost gospel if you advance.
Speaker 2: So with the Book of Mormon, which is inscribed on
Speaker 2: gold plates. So this is like a book with metal pages. Okay,
Speaker 2: here is here is an artistic portrayal of what Mormons
Speaker 2: think it looked like. All right, he finds as well
Speaker 2: the Urim and the I'm gonna get this wrong. I'm
Speaker 2: remembering it, but don't I don't know the word the
Speaker 2: urim and the theream. These are biblical artifacts. So the
Speaker 2: Old Testament mentions the priesthood of Israel having stones that
Speaker 2: they use in a kind of ritual. They can use
Speaker 2: these stones to detect the guilt or innocence of someone
Speaker 2: accused of a crime, for instance. This is all in
Speaker 2: the Mosaic Law. So this is in the Old Testament.
Speaker 2: Joseph Smith claims that he recovered those stones the Book
Speaker 2: of Mormon on the hilltop in Vermont. He also claims
Speaker 2: that he found a breastplate that the stones are attached to. Now,
Speaker 2: I like this portrayal right here. Joseph Smith did not
Speaker 2: give us an illustration of these things, not to my
Speaker 2: knowledge anyway. I'm not aware of that for sure, but
Speaker 2: I don't think he did. I think this right here,
Speaker 2: this is a modern Mormon artistic expression of what they
Speaker 2: believe Joseph Smith found with the Book of Mormon. What
Speaker 2: this is magical magical eyeglasses that translate the reformed Egyptian
Speaker 2: hieroglyphics in the metal plates that he found. The Mormons
Speaker 2: say Joseph Smith translated the book that they call the
Speaker 2: Book of Mormon. In this manner, he publishes this book
Speaker 2: in I think he translates it in northern Pennsylvania. He
Speaker 2: publishes it in western New York as another Gospel of
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ and starts a new church, a rest a
Speaker 2: restorationist cult if you will, cult, meaning a following with
Speaker 2: this movement and in his adherents. He moves westward. First
Speaker 2: he goes to northern Ohio, a place settled mostly with
Speaker 2: New Englanders, the same area where you find Oberlin College.
Speaker 2: Actually this is this is an area that's that's very
Speaker 2: important in the second grade Awakening. But he keeps getting
Speaker 2: chased away because this is this is a very radical
Speaker 2: preaching or teaching that he has. He goes to Missouri.
Speaker 2: He claims that independence Missouri, which is right beside Kansas City,
Speaker 2: is going to be a capital in some spiritual sense
Speaker 2: for America, but is unable to stay in Missouri. He
Speaker 2: faces major backlash and persecution from the Missourians. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of stories of these Mormon missionaries, uh, these
Speaker 2: Mormon evangelists getting very hostile receptions in these frontier communities.
Speaker 2: But Joseph Smith ends up in a town called navu Illinois.
Speaker 2: Now he founds this town. He names it Nauvoo in
Speaker 2: a U v o O. And it is on the
Speaker 2: Mississippi River. And it's it's kind of at the at
Speaker 2: the corner of Missouri Iowa in Illinois. So it's it's
Speaker 2: rather near Hannibal, Missouri. And is it Moline, Illinois up
Speaker 2: that way, it's it's rather Quincy, Illinois. Quincy, Illinois is
Speaker 2: one of those towns. It's on the Mississippi River. They
Speaker 2: build a town there. They build a temple there. I
Speaker 2: think this is their second temple. And Joseph Smith proclaims
Speaker 2: two very interesting things. First, he says that God wants
Speaker 2: all Mormon men to practice polygamy. And Joseph Smith, according
Speaker 2: to some accounts, there is controversy on this point and
Speaker 2: that and this is a very interesting controversy. I don't
Speaker 2: we know what it's about. That there's controversy about how
Speaker 2: many wives Joseph Smith ended up taking. On one group
Speaker 2: of Mormons. Those that follow the son of Joseph Smith
Speaker 2: deny that he ever claimed a teaching of polygamy and
Speaker 2: that he ever married anyone but his first wife, which
Speaker 2: is a really wild claim of the Mormons in Utah,
Speaker 2: which are the predominant Mormon sect. They're overwhelmingly the largest
Speaker 2: Mormon sect. They claim that Joseph Smith married dozens of women,
Speaker 2: and this is this is a really peculiar story. How
Speaker 2: did he manage to do this? He did this mostly
Speaker 2: in secret, but the teaching of the Mormons and their
Speaker 2: practice of polygamy becomes known. The second thing that he
Speaker 2: does is he runs for president of the United States.
Speaker 2: Mormons believe that the United States of America is a
Speaker 2: providential organization that is put together and contains divine intent.
Speaker 2: That America is literally a nation chosen by God to
Speaker 2: work God's will on earth. The Mormons believe that the
Speaker 2: Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States
Speaker 2: are divinely inspired. And this is a very important thing. This,
Speaker 2: This has gone to serve Mormons very well in modern times.
Speaker 2: I understand Mormons are great favorites of the FBI and
Speaker 2: the CIA. They like to recruit among them because they
Speaker 2: believe that they are serving God by serving the United
Speaker 2: States government in some way. Anyway, Joseph Smith, while he's
Speaker 2: running for president, he is lynched in Illinois. So Joseph
Speaker 2: Smith he forms a militia in Nauvoo that destroys the
Speaker 2: press of a paper criticizing Joseph Smith and the Mormons,
Speaker 2: rather than run from the warrant issued to him for
Speaker 2: doing this. The charge is treason against the state of Illinois.
Speaker 2: Because he has formed a militia and commanded a military
Speaker 2: formation to carry out an act of violence in the
Speaker 2: state of Illinois. That's treason against the state of Illinois.
Speaker 2: He is usurping the role of the governor, who has
Speaker 2: the sole authority to command military forces in Illinois. So
Speaker 2: Joseph Smith decides to turn himself in to the authorities.
Speaker 2: He goes to the local magistrate who has a jail building,
Speaker 2: and a lynch mob shows up. Joseph Smith is there
Speaker 2: with his brother, Hiram Smith, who is one of his
Speaker 2: key lieutenants. He does everything with Hiram, and the lynch
Speaker 2: mob attacks the jail. Joseph Smith and Hiram are both armed,
Speaker 2: so this is a very interesting thing. They aren't locked
Speaker 2: in a cell here. The magistrate knows that a mob
Speaker 2: is out for blood and he's actually trying to protect them,
Speaker 2: and Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith fight the mob through
Speaker 2: a and in the process, both of them are shot.
Speaker 2: I believe Hiram is shot in the face and Joseph
Speaker 2: Smith is shot elsewhere on his body. Joseph Smith then
Speaker 2: jumps out the window where he is shot several more
Speaker 2: times and succumbs. So this this year is a Mormon
Speaker 2: monument by the jail where the lynching took place. And
Speaker 2: this is a statue of Joseph and Hiram Smith. Now
Speaker 2: this is something as as a history guy in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, I have a certain appreciation for the Mormons
Speaker 2: for getting behind their own people. Mormons have repudiated their
Speaker 2: doctrine of polygamy, though they do not deny that Joseph
Speaker 2: Smith and Brigham Young were politeimists and their forefathers were polygamists.
Speaker 2: They don't deny it, but they don't practice it anymore.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that they don't like these people.
Speaker 2: And and they're they're controversial people that do things that
Speaker 2: that Americans traditionally found distasteful and dreadful and wicked. And
Speaker 2: yet Mormons do not back down, and they like their
Speaker 2: own people. And I like that, and I wish that
Speaker 2: other Americans had more of that themselves. I think that's
Speaker 2: a healthy attitude in spite of all the weird and
Speaker 2: untrue things Mormons believe. I really appreciate this about them. So,
Speaker 2: after the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young becomes the
Speaker 2: leader of the Mormons. Young is he presides over a
Speaker 2: kind of church split at the death of Joseph Smith.
Speaker 2: Young is one of Smith's lieutenants, and Young decides to
Speaker 2: abandon Nauvoo, Illinois, the town that the Mormons built. At
Speaker 2: one time, it was one of the largest cities on
Speaker 2: the Mississippi River. It was like it wasn't as big
Speaker 2: as Chicago. It never was as big as Chicago, but
Speaker 2: at one point it was like the second largest city
Speaker 2: in Illinois, is what I want to say. Young decides
Speaker 2: to abandon this. He decides to send a lot of
Speaker 2: missionaries to England, where they recruit lots of new conferts,
Speaker 2: and he decides to move westward to the Great Desert
Speaker 2: beyond the mountains. And so Young travels to what is
Speaker 2: now Utah and founds Salt Lake City, Utah, as the
Speaker 2: new center of the Mormon people. They're going to get
Speaker 2: far away from these hostile Protestants back east. This is
Speaker 2: a really remarkable story because they go to Utah, which
Speaker 2: is a very very forbidding landscape. Young says, this is
Speaker 2: the place which I think is like the slogan of
Speaker 2: Utah today. And they build Salt Lake City, and this
Speaker 2: is a very urban environment, which is also very curious.
Speaker 2: Utah is the most heavily urbanized state in the United
Speaker 2: States today. Young brings his English converts all the way
Speaker 2: from England, all the way out there to the desert.
Speaker 2: They transport their belongings in things like wheelbarrows. They don't
Speaker 2: even have wagons for this trek. They walk all the
Speaker 2: way to Utah. Young Mary's dozens of women. This is
Speaker 2: his house complex. They have several names. One is called
Speaker 2: the Beehive House, one is called the Lion House. Now
Speaker 2: something interesting about Young. He was married when he converted
Speaker 2: to Mormonism and became an apostle of Joseph Smith. That's
Speaker 2: his official title. By the way, they have the Council
Speaker 2: of the Twelve Apostles. These are restored Apostolic chairs. Catholic
Speaker 2: and Orthodox listeners would immediately hone in on that and go,
Speaker 2: oh okay, the Apostolic seats seats to exist. They're all vacant,
Speaker 2: and Joseph Smith filled them, he restored them. There's there's
Speaker 2: a there's a certain recognition that we have there. Anyway,
Speaker 2: his first wife always had predominance. Uh Young's first wife
Speaker 2: had her very own house, and all the other other
Speaker 2: wives lived in other houses. One of these houses is
Speaker 2: rather like a dormitory, okay, where every wife has her
Speaker 2: own little living area, her own little apartment that she
Speaker 2: lives in. But Young's first wife was always the head wife.
Speaker 2: So there's there's a certain similarity there to the complex
Speaker 2: marriages in the Kingdom of Siam, or in a in
Speaker 2: a chikh's hareem or something, or or in the co
Speaker 2: leif's boudoir or whatever. Wherever the Muslims and Pagans keep
Speaker 2: their wives, there is a head wife. There's a wife
Speaker 2: with predominance, and the Mormons adopted that practice too. Polygamy
Speaker 2: has worked, and it has worked in America in the
Speaker 2: sense that it was part of a successful social construction,
Speaker 2: a new society, a new community in which polygamy was
Speaker 2: at the top and widespread within. It's a very strange story. Eventually,
Speaker 2: of course, we know that the Mormons do give up
Speaker 2: that teaching, and we might call them orthodox Mormons today
Speaker 2: do not practice polygamy. It is fundamentalist sectarians in Mormonism
Speaker 2: that practice polygamy. Today in America and elsewhere, there are
Speaker 2: or there are oddball Mormon polygamists. The Mormons build temples
Speaker 2: around Utah. These are two examples. On the right, you
Speaker 2: see the main temple in Salt Lake City that was
Speaker 2: built by Young. On the left you see a smaller
Speaker 2: temple in Saint George, Utah. These are unusual constructions. There
Speaker 2: are American art students that specialize in the oddity of
Speaker 2: this architecture. Just where does this architecture come from? This
Speaker 2: is a curious thing. The Mormons do not always meet
Speaker 2: in temples. There are a limited number of Mormon temples,
Speaker 2: and certain Mormon rights in rituals can only be performed
Speaker 2: in a temple, So Mormons make pilgrimages, if you will,
Speaker 2: to regional temples. Unsurprisingly, most of these temples are in Utah,
Speaker 2: but there are temples spread around the world at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Prominently, there's one near DC, which, if you've ever driven,
Speaker 1: I believe it's ninety five you when you drive from
Speaker 1: Maryland into d C. You can see kind of like
Speaker 1: the top spire of the Mormon Temple, and.
Speaker 2: Those spires frequently have the Mormon emblem on it. The
Speaker 2: symbol usually done in a little gold statue of an
Speaker 2: angel blowing on a horn, and that is the symbol
Speaker 2: of the angel Maroni, who first appeared to Joseph Smith. So,
Speaker 2: as the story goes, an American angel that reveals the
Speaker 2: doctrines of Mormonism. This is a photograph from the interior
Speaker 2: of a Mormon temple. I know this is a very
Speaker 2: strange site for most of us, but this is actually
Speaker 2: an Old Testament image. This is something that's copied from
Speaker 2: what we see for the designs of the temple in Jerusalem,
Speaker 2: or or is it the tabernacle? Is the design for
Speaker 2: the Tabernacle? There is a great basin that is described
Speaker 2: in the Old Testament? Is it the bronze see? Is
Speaker 2: that what these the bronze basin?
Speaker 1: I can't remember the exact word to describe it, but
Speaker 1: isn't it a It's a basin for ritual purification of
Speaker 1: the priests.
Speaker 2: And I'm corrected, that is correct, Yes, it's it's for
Speaker 2: the Jewish priests to to purify themselves. And this bronze
Speaker 2: basin is on the backs of a number of Oxen.
Speaker 2: I forget what number it is, but that's what you're
Speaker 2: seeing here. This is actually an image that you see
Speaker 2: in the Old Testament that the Mormons restored to usage
Speaker 2: in their in their religious practices, and this operates as
Speaker 2: a baptismal font for them. Mormons practice the baptism of
Speaker 2: the dead, so they believe that through proxy baptism of
Speaker 2: Mormon the Mormon faithful, Mormon faithful being baptized in the
Speaker 2: names of people who are dead, can restore those people
Speaker 2: spiritually and make them members of the Mormon Church. And
Speaker 2: for this reason, Mormons have a the most amazing knowledge
Speaker 2: of genealogy, perhaps anyone has ever accomplished in all of history.
Speaker 2: They've devoted great recent sources to this because this is
Speaker 2: a religious tenant for them, and they're interested in saying
Speaker 2: the names of every person who has ever lived in
Speaker 2: proxy baptisms and in keeping these names. So they've built
Speaker 2: doomsday vaults to store the names of baptized Mormons, presumably
Speaker 2: the vast majority of whom are long dead and they've
Speaker 2: been baptized in a proxy baptism. So Mormons have people
Speaker 2: converted to Mormonism will try to find the names of
Speaker 2: all of their ancestors in order to participate in proxy
Speaker 2: baptisms for all of their forebears. I've described all of
Speaker 2: this as restorationism of the idea that the Church founded
Speaker 2: by Christ and the apostles ceased to exist at some
Speaker 2: point in history and must be refounded. So that's what
Speaker 2: this is all based. In one last Mormon story, and
Speaker 2: we will conclude on his way out west, Brigham Young
Speaker 2: had several church splits along the way. There was a
Speaker 2: lot of dissatisfaction with Young's leadership, and the most amusing
Speaker 2: of these stories, at least to me, is that of
Speaker 2: James Strang. James Strang was a follower of Joseph Smith,
Speaker 2: a disciple of Young, who left Young on their movement westward.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, Strang denied that Joseph Smith was a polygamist.
Speaker 2: He said that Young by making Smith's teaching public, which
Speaker 2: is what Young claimed to have done, Strang said that
Speaker 2: he was departing from this teaching of Joseph Smith, and
Speaker 2: so Strang claimed to represent the true teaching of Joseph
Speaker 2: Smith and led a faction away from Young. They went
Speaker 2: to Beaver Island, Michigan, in the middle of Lake Michigan,
Speaker 2: this is an island in the north of Lake Michigan,
Speaker 2: so it's near it's near Wisconsin, I suppose, and started
Speaker 2: his own utopian commune on Beaver Island. He claimed he
Speaker 2: was king. He was crowned on Beaver Island by his followers.
Speaker 2: He then proclaimed polygamy. Now this is very amusing because
Speaker 2: he split from Young because Strang said polygamy was not
Speaker 2: a true Mormon teaching in practice. But when he became
Speaker 2: the leader of his own group, he claimed he proclaimed
Speaker 2: a teaching of polygamy. He claimed that he found his
Speaker 2: own golden plates and he published them, and he was
Speaker 2: elected to the state Legislature of Michigan. It's just, oh,
Speaker 2: very delightful. It is the only self proclaimed self proclaimed
Speaker 2: king to ever sit in the Michigan State Legislature. Maybe
Speaker 2: so it's the only one I know of in America.
Speaker 2: But I yes, yes, I think this is so delightful
Speaker 2: because he would he would serve as an elected representative.
Speaker 2: He had some accomplishments in organizing regional governmental authority in Michigan.
Speaker 2: His goal seems to be the autonomy of Beaver Island
Speaker 2: in the state of Michigan. That seems to be his
Speaker 2: practical purpose, but he ended up doing a lot to
Speaker 2: organize county government, I believe in Michigan, and he's still
Speaker 2: known for that in Michigan, which is delightful. I don't
Speaker 2: I don't know much about Michigan, but maybe maybe this
Speaker 2: guy deserves to be on a future currency of the
Speaker 2: state of Michigan, or needs some statues in Michigan or
Speaker 2: something like that. But his story has has a shocking end.
Speaker 2: Being isolated out on this island, mister Strang King Strang
Speaker 2: would get on ships very frequently and this was a
Speaker 2: place where his enemies knew that they could find him.
Speaker 2: So he would go back and forth from the island
Speaker 2: to the mainland, and one day his enemies jumped him.
Speaker 2: Now these were members of his church who assassinated him,
Speaker 2: and very strangely, they were never prosecuted for the crime.
Speaker 2: There were dozens of witnesses that saw them jump out
Speaker 2: and shoot James Strang while he was walking down the
Speaker 2: gang plank to the ship in the harbor at Beaver Island,
Speaker 2: so there was no shortage of witnesses. But the assailants
Speaker 2: were brought to the mainland by a navy cutter that
Speaker 2: was in port at the time. So the navy brought
Speaker 2: these people to the magistrate. The magistrate released them on
Speaker 2: a trivial bail, and the community on the mainland then
Speaker 2: through them a celebratory dinner and they never faced charges
Speaker 2: for the murder of James Strang. That's hilarious.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about that.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a this is like a judicial, judicially
Speaker 2: approved murder.
Speaker 1: Well, see, there's a difference between like what the antiphotypes
Speaker 1: mean when they say community policing and what community policing
Speaker 1: actually turns into. Yes, indeed, I mean Lynch's Law is
Speaker 1: an old American tradition. People think that people think Lynch's
Speaker 1: Law is all about racial animus, but there are so
Speaker 1: many examples to the contrary. I always tell my students
Speaker 1: about racial lynching, but but I tell them so many
Speaker 1: stories like this that have nothing to do with race
Speaker 1: at all, and say, well, this is an example. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people just really want to kill and they take
Speaker 1: the lawn to their own hands. And this happens many
Speaker 1: times in American history, right, right, So I think we
Speaker 1: have one more slide.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think so. So in in review, what can
Speaker 2: we learn from this? I think that we can recognize
Speaker 2: that a lot of these innovations are still very much
Speaker 2: with us. We see lots of connections with modern progressive
Speaker 2: ideas in the Second Great Awakening. We see the Second
Speaker 2: Great Awakening inspired people to a sort of fanaticism born
Speaker 2: of religious conviction. A fanatic is someone who redoubles their
Speaker 2: efforts when the goal has been lost. The goal has
Speaker 2: been forgotten, so a fanatic ends up working against his
Speaker 2: own goals by increasing the enthusiasm with which he pursues them.
Speaker 2: We see this in American politics. We certainly see it
Speaker 2: in the run up right before the Civil War, with
Speaker 2: people like John Brown the Terrorist. We see like religious
Speaker 2: ideas about a barent sexual behavior, like novel religious sanctions
Speaker 2: for a baran sexual behavior, which is certainly still with us.
Speaker 2: Anytime we hear, you know, transsexualism as holy or something
Speaker 2: like that, were our ears should perk up. This is
Speaker 2: something that has been part of American religious rhetoric for
Speaker 2: a long time. We didn't focus so much about this
Speaker 2: in our presentation today, but there is a lot of
Speaker 2: interest in race and racial relations in many of these movements,
Speaker 2: especially the humanist communes. We see that in particular with
Speaker 2: people like the Shakers who want racial harmony. This is
Speaker 2: one of the things that they preach. They teach the
Speaker 2: Quakers and Shakers both talk about the universal brotherhood of man,
Speaker 2: and that's something that they elevate highly in their religious rhetoric.
Speaker 2: Again making me think that the way that those ideas
Speaker 2: have gone so mainstream as to be counted as as
Speaker 2: doctrine and indisputable by otherwise Orthodox Christians, small Orthodox Christians
Speaker 2: in America today shows just how far those Quaker and
Speaker 2: Shaker ideas have gone in our religious beliefs. In America
Speaker 2: or in the West, there's a lot of interest in
Speaker 2: economic inequality and trying to rectify that with Christian socialism,
Speaker 2: as Finny's critics termed it most disturbingly, a obviously a
Speaker 2: willingness to abandon all manner of orthodox dogma and practice
Speaker 2: for temporal political goals. Finally, I want to reiterate, these
Speaker 2: radical religious innovations were almost exclusively confined to the North,
Speaker 2: to the point that Southern writers on religion and politics,
Speaker 2: people like the Presbyterian R. L. Dabney, who ended his
Speaker 2: life teaching at Hampton Sydney College in Armville, Virginia. R. L.
Speaker 2: Dabney said that this was a This was all examples
Speaker 2: of the Northern religious tradition. This was where Northern religious
Speaker 2: belief led inexorably. And uh he he roundly damned it
Speaker 2: and cursed it frequently. He's he's very colorful in that.
Speaker 2: Other Southern theologians, uh, James Henley Thornwell, other interesting writers. Uh.
Speaker 2: Defenders of Southern institutions, uh, defenders of Southern politics, uh.
Speaker 2: Defenders of the institution of slavery, people like George Fitzhugh
Speaker 2: also had a lot to say about this. They were saying, well,
Speaker 2: these Northerners are are doing all sorts of crazy things.
Speaker 2: Are saying that it's evil to eat meat. They're saying
Speaker 2: that everyone should live in an urban apartment house as
Speaker 2: like a religious tenant. This is impossible in the imagination
Speaker 2: of Southerners at this time in history, where practically no
Speaker 2: one lives in a city. But they aren't centralized, they're
Speaker 2: spread out. They don't want to participate in an industrial economy,
Speaker 2: and they're very suspicious of charismatic personalities starting innovative cult movements.
Speaker 2: Southerners at this point in history do not go in
Speaker 2: on that. Now. Much has changed since then, and I
Speaker 2: think the South has become much more Americanized since then.
Speaker 2: But this is the American scene just at the cusp
Speaker 2: of the Civil War. And I do think it has
Speaker 2: a lot to do with how the war, how the
Speaker 2: war develops, Where does the war come from? Art it
Speaker 2: is religious differences? Well, well again, right.
Speaker 1: It it's so easy, excuse me to take a moment
Speaker 1: to cough. It's very easy to kind of look at,
Speaker 1: you know, the war between the States as a purely
Speaker 1: economic affair or as this like moral crusade of you know, uh,
Speaker 1: like proto Nazis against you know, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: good and the good and the true and the beautiful, right, but.
Speaker 2: Really fanatics from Oberlin College versus the proto Nazis Southerners, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right, exactly. But really it was to civilizations with
Speaker 1: just fundamentally different beliefs, different religions, different ways of ordering society.
Speaker 1: And I mean it's really no surprise that those that
Speaker 1: those couldn't exist alongside, you know, at least like based
Speaker 1: on kind of like the conditions at the time, right,
Speaker 1: those were those were those things. Two things could not
Speaker 1: be married together, at least in the way that you know,
Speaker 1: the Northerners wanted it to be.
Speaker 2: There is. There's growing conviction, especially in the North, but
Speaker 2: strangely also with the legal minds in the South that
Speaker 2: could not permit diversity of institutions, diversity of beliefs in
Speaker 2: one union anymore. I think it worked for a time.
Speaker 2: States had different established churches. In spite of all of
Speaker 2: our talk about the separation of church and state. The
Speaker 2: First Amendment bans Congress from establishing a national church. It
Speaker 2: does not do anything to prohibit a state from doing so.
Speaker 2: And so I know Massachusetts and Georgia, for instance, both
Speaker 2: of them had established churches after the ratification of the Constitution.
Speaker 2: That is federalism. That's what Americans meant back when they
Speaker 2: adopted the Constitution by a federal government, that the states
Speaker 2: could be different from each other. They could have different economies,
Speaker 2: they could have different populations. Right, tiny little Delaware has
Speaker 2: two senators and so does mighty huge New York. They're
Speaker 2: equal in the Senate. States are different from each other
Speaker 2: in size, different in population, but the same in some
Speaker 2: federal way, equal representation. In some way. They could have
Speaker 2: been different from each other, they could have developed differently,
Speaker 2: but at some point they became more alike. In this
Speaker 2: upset people on both sides. Northern Ners wanted. They wanted
Speaker 2: common values on things like slavery. They eventually coalesced about
Speaker 2: that and said we want to abolish slavery, and they
Speaker 2: didn't want to allow for diversity on that opinion. It's
Speaker 2: not something that one can compromise on. You either have
Speaker 2: slavery or you don't. There's no middle way. The Republican
Speaker 2: Party initially ran against what they said in their platform,
Speaker 2: those two relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy. They actually
Speaker 2: ran against Mormon polygamy. They wanted to outlaw Mormon polygamy
Speaker 2: as well as slavery. They weren't going to let the
Speaker 2: Mormons be different out in Utah. The Mormons had to
Speaker 2: be made the same. This is what Lincoln said. He
Speaker 2: said that this country cannot remain half slave and half free.
Speaker 2: It must become all one thing or all the other.
Speaker 2: And that's a nationalist sort of idea. And Southerners, or
Speaker 2: at least Southern jurists, were responsible for the dread Scott decision,
Speaker 2: which Northerners feared would destroy all prohibitions on slavery in
Speaker 2: the North. The dread Scott decision destroyed the Missouri Compromise,
Speaker 2: which divided the sections into slaveholding and non slaveholding states,
Speaker 2: and that was kind of a broken compromise in a
Speaker 2: broken protection that the Northerners thought was was protecting them
Speaker 2: from the expansion of slavery. So in one sense, you
Speaker 2: could say both both Southerners and Northerners had gotten to
Speaker 2: a point where they were uncomfortable in a union that
Speaker 2: would have those things in common. They became points on
Speaker 2: which no one was comfortable and agreeing to permit those things.
Speaker 1: All right, I think, George, we're kind of reaching the
Speaker 1: end of end of my endurance. At least you've been
Speaker 1: here for two and a half hours, which is quite
Speaker 1: long for my show. So do you mind if I
Speaker 1: move on to super chats and if you guys want
Speaker 1: to send anything else. We were happy to answer questions,
Speaker 1: but we've got a couple Luth Templar, who I had
Speaker 1: on just last night on the call in show. Shakers
Speaker 1: basically went extinct because they take a vow of celibacy,
Speaker 1: and well, if you don't breed, you die. Nice furniture,
Speaker 1: but Shakers do not equal Quakers. Yes, I think we
Speaker 1: covered that. He was probably just a little bit ahead
Speaker 1: of a there, and then a little bit later he said,
Speaker 1: it's true what they said progressives were born as a
Speaker 1: Puritan cult. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This is kind of one of Jarvin's you know, premiere observations,
Speaker 1: you know, where he says that, and this is again
Speaker 1: when he says about you know kind of and I
Speaker 1: can't remember the exact name of the essay. I think
Speaker 1: it's part of open letter where he essentially talks about
Speaker 1: Quaker America, you know, and how this kind of like
Speaker 1: progressivism is essentially like an extended version of of Quaker theology.
Speaker 1: So obviously you can head to you know, his which
Speaker 1: I think Skeptical Waves has an audio version of you
Speaker 1: can find it anywhere. But he goes into quite he
Speaker 1: goes into a lot of depth from his perspective on
Speaker 1: why he used progressivism. It's essentially like a Protestant heresy.
Speaker 1: But I think that's pretty much you know, foundational reading
Speaker 1: for our spheres. And then Machiavelli sucks to go just
Speaker 1: donated and said good show, thank you, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. And then this is I think crnch Walker
Speaker 1: lu Templar again talking about you know, when we were
Speaker 1: talking about the Mormons. A little known, but there is
Speaker 1: some mention of ruins with supposed Hebrew inscription from the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds. Smith wasn't the first one to claim finding
Speaker 1: strange artifacts in that area.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, I understand Mormons are particularly interested in pre
Speaker 2: Columbian America for obvious reasons, and Mormon students and scholars
Speaker 2: are known for going to Central America.
Speaker 3: And going into the Aztec ruins and things like that
Speaker 3: looking for any sort of symbolism that they can relate
Speaker 3: to Jewish civilization.
Speaker 2: To my knowledge, the claims that Mormons have made about
Speaker 2: such connections are debatable at best.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. There's actually a whole there's a whole
Speaker 1: genre of essentially like Mormon speculative fiction, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of like as a Mormon version of the Left Behind series,
Speaker 1: if you will, but all about these kind of like
Speaker 1: pre Colombian civilizations. And it's interesting that much like kind
Speaker 1: of you know, Evangelical Protestants have kind of like crowd
Speaker 1: funded their own movies, there's like a subgenre of essentially
Speaker 1: like Mormon fiction movies, you know, and then none of
Speaker 1: them are particularly good, but they are they are out there,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting because I obviously just didn't. There aren't
Speaker 1: very many Mormons in the American South, you know. I
Speaker 1: think it was famously was it Arkansas or Oklahoma where
Speaker 1: it was technically still legal to kill Mormons until the seventies.
Speaker 2: Turnip Seed knows all about that. I love our turnip Seed.
Speaker 1: He's the one I've been truly impressed with how much
Speaker 1: of a ruckus he's been able to cull and the uh.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so proud of him. He deserves Champagne toasts.
Speaker 2: Bravo for turnip Seed.
Speaker 1: Well, anyway, I don't see any more more questions coming in, George.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else you want to you want to
Speaker 1: bring up to kind of bring this to a close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought of something with your last remark. I
Speaker 2: was thinking about Mormon art and Mormon artists. It's a
Speaker 2: really interesting subject. They they have, They do have some
Speaker 2: interesting writers associated with them. Orson Scott Card is one
Speaker 2: the science fiction author. He is a Mormon, and I
Speaker 2: think he lives in North Carolina, of all places. I
Speaker 2: think Skeptical Waves actually published something by Orson Scott Card
Speaker 2: about about modern religious sensibilities. I'm trying to remember just
Speaker 2: what it was, but I think so.
Speaker 1: He also did one on h He also did a
Speaker 1: good Orson Scott Card piece on fiction writing. I can't
Speaker 1: remember exactly what it was, but yeah, I do remember
Speaker 1: that Skeptical Waves has a series. I think they must
Speaker 1: have published some collection of his essays and so you
Speaker 1: can listen to him talk about religion and one and
Speaker 1: then oh, I think it was specifically it was about like, uh,
Speaker 1: like inappropriate content in fiction and how people kind of
Speaker 1: use like sex and violence as a crutch. But that's
Speaker 1: neither here nor there. So that he has at least
Speaker 1: several essays by Orson Scott Card on his channel.
Speaker 2: But anyway, you were saying, I'm interested in Orson Scott Card.
Speaker 2: I don't claim that I know much about him, but
Speaker 2: I know he teaches creative writing, for instance, and I
Speaker 2: think he has interesting things to say. I'm I'm sympathetic.
Speaker 2: I've mentioned before I'm a little sympathetic with the more Romans.
Speaker 2: I suppose the our situation living in the Ashes has
Speaker 2: created strange bedfellows. I like seeing people who are able
Speaker 2: to believe things in this environment. Being a member, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: is it, and believe them confidently? Yes, actually actually live
Speaker 2: their lives, going against the flow and having a having
Speaker 2: a heritage that is despised and mocked, and yet holding
Speaker 2: their heads up high. I admire that that is manly,
Speaker 2: That is good, and it it takes that sort of
Speaker 2: behavior to survive what we undergo today. We need to
Speaker 2: cultivate those virtues in our And I'm I'm a member
Speaker 2: of very small, an obscure group in America. There are
Speaker 2: very many Eastern Orthodox Christians in America, but I I
Speaker 2: have something to learn from these groups who are who
Speaker 2: are also you know, dismissed or discarded.
Speaker 1: And there's also something to be learned from the fact
Speaker 1: of like the Mormons especially know how to act as
Speaker 1: a minority, you know, and they've done very well for themselves,
Speaker 1: you know, in their own area and also just in government.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, without being too explicit about that,
Speaker 1: I think that's a skill we ought to learn.
Speaker 2: Yes, they built their own parallel institutions, for instance, and
Speaker 2: that is that is a really interesting example. Now I
Speaker 2: have I have friends who are ex Mormons, and I
Speaker 2: like talking to them about it. They converted to Orthodoxy,
Speaker 2: strangely enough, but by way of neopaganism, and they tell
Speaker 2: me that Mormon institutions are going just as woke as
Speaker 2: as other institutions in our society, which I lament. I
Speaker 2: would much rather them, I don't know, do do their
Speaker 2: own traditional thing, whatever that is. I don't claim to
Speaker 2: know what it is. But well, right, why should they
Speaker 2: be like everybody else? Why should Why should Brigham Young
Speaker 2: University be like any state university. It shouldn't. And it's
Speaker 2: tragic that it's not. They should do Brigham Young stuff
Speaker 2: whatever that is.
Speaker 1: Well, exactly, And it's it's interesting because if you pay
Speaker 1: attention to these, you see the kind of like guns
Speaker 1: of progressive media turned on the Mormons. You know, there's
Speaker 1: alway these like expos A's quote unquote like, oh, do
Speaker 1: you know that at Brigham Young University a lot of
Speaker 1: people get married when they're young, right out of college.
Speaker 1: They're expected to start families. Isn't it awful? All of
Speaker 1: these people getting married? And again you're like, well, look,
Speaker 1: I don't agree with Mormon theology at all. You know,
Speaker 1: We've said that, But I'm beginning to think that the
Speaker 1: reason they're so despised has absolutely nothing to do with
Speaker 1: theology and has a whole lot to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that they're not progressive clients.
Speaker 2: That's right, at least at least the ones that believe
Speaker 2: the teachings of their sect that they are in that camp.
Speaker 1: So we had another question come in from from John Carter,
Speaker 1: who I will say has been saying very very funny
Speaker 1: things in the live chat, and I know it's been
Speaker 1: a serious dream So I've not been highlighting them, but
Speaker 1: I did notice them, and I laughed at them. But
Speaker 1: he says, someday, I'd love to hear Bagbee talk about
Speaker 1: the Anabaptists in America as well as the Amana colonies,
Speaker 1: if he has any experience.
Speaker 2: I know very little about the Amana group. I know
Speaker 2: they're in Iowa. I know that they were a secular
Speaker 2: at least if I'm remembering it correctly. I do have
Speaker 2: a book on my shelf about them. Let me take
Speaker 2: a look here, because I know right where it is.
Speaker 2: Nord Off Community or the Communistic Societies of the United States,
Speaker 2: Charles Nordoff, and uh, I've got it on my shelf here,
Speaker 2: but I have not read his chapter on Amana, but
Speaker 2: he would be the contemporary authority on the community. I
Speaker 2: am very interested in Baptist groups. I was actually talking
Speaker 2: this afternoon about Baptist groups, and I would like to
Speaker 2: do more more reading on the subject. There seem to
Speaker 2: be two interesting camps in the Baptists. There's Landmarkers. Landmarkers
Speaker 2: believe that all of Christian history, as as known by
Speaker 2: every every one else in Christianity, is more or less
Speaker 2: a conspiracy to libel Baptist groups. So landmark Baptists say
Speaker 2: that the the Gnostics, the Albigensians, the Cathars, the Nestorians,
Speaker 2: the Aryans were all Baptists and they were being libeled
Speaker 2: and accused of complete falsehoods by the official Church, and
Speaker 2: that Baptists are actually the Apostolic Church in hiding through
Speaker 2: all of the history. Now, they don't actually have any
Speaker 2: documents for this at all. It is basically a conspiratorial
Speaker 2: view that the Baptists are the Apostolic Church, and you
Speaker 2: have to give them courage for making that argument, at least.
Speaker 2: I mean, they believe apostol roots are absolutely necessary for legitimacy,
Speaker 2: and so do I. So I give them that.
Speaker 1: Well, well, you have to, and this is with any religion.
Speaker 1: There's a certain point where you do have to just
Speaker 1: like admire the goal.
Speaker 2: Of it yes, this isn't.
Speaker 1: You know, This isn't like, oh, we have a minor
Speaker 1: disagreement about the Council of Trent or something.
Speaker 2: It's like that.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, everything is one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty degrees flipped, just completely wrong.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, I understand. I understand the more more mainstream Baptists,
Speaker 2: like most Baptists are not Landmarkers, but more mainstream Baptists
Speaker 2: would relate themselves back to Zwingli and the Anabaptist Reformers
Speaker 2: in some way. So that would be like the opinion
Speaker 2: that the Baptists are actually part of the Reformation, that
Speaker 2: is their genesis, that is where they came from. The
Speaker 2: landmarkers deny that stringently. And I encounter landmarkers very frequently,
Speaker 2: and I care very much about these people, so I
Speaker 2: want to take their position seriously. But outside of a
Speaker 2: few very short tracks with no footnotes, I can't get
Speaker 2: much information about their beliefs and where they came from.
Speaker 2: So I really want to get more information about them,
Speaker 2: and I need a big library to do that. I guess.
Speaker 1: Well, that's a very very well thought out answer. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I have a and I won't say his name until
Speaker 1: I confirm him on the show, but a mutual friend
Speaker 1: of ours, Bagbee, who's an expert on both Southern American
Speaker 1: history and also Southern Christian American history, and I've been
Speaker 1: trying to get him on to talk about the history
Speaker 1: of Presbyterianism across the across the US, which is also
Speaker 1: quite interesting because a lot of this, you know, it
Speaker 1: is on one hand, people always say like, oh, like
Speaker 1: you know, Broadest in particular are always fracturing, which is
Speaker 1: partially true. But there are kind of four main traditions, uh,
Speaker 1: and these these branches much like you and they're not
Speaker 1: completely correlated with the you know, with the four or
Speaker 1: five groups from a from Albion seed that they're quite close,
Speaker 1: and so the history of these groups can kind of
Speaker 1: provide a second level of information when you look at
Speaker 1: American history.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And similarly to how to how Thomas talks about kind
Speaker 1: of like the ethnic component of American politics, you know,
Speaker 1: which is often led out let out Similarly, you you
Speaker 1: kind of you lose a dimension, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're not seeing kind of like the religious and
Speaker 1: cultural aspect of these kind of like uh, I guess
Speaker 1: like American conflicts.
Speaker 2: Absolutely and there is strong correspondence from these these Anglo
Speaker 2: groups that settled colonies on the seaboard of the United
Speaker 2: States and their religious traditions and how those traditions evolve
Speaker 2: and where they go, and the political priorities that go
Speaker 2: with those traditions. Religion and politics have a lot of
Speaker 2: correspondence with one another. What people believe about God and
Speaker 2: the nature of man and the story of evil and
Speaker 2: redemption has an awful lot to do with what they
Speaker 2: will believe about politics and what should go on as
Speaker 2: far as justice. And if we remember the map that
Speaker 2: we looked at with the Second Great Awakening where the
Speaker 2: reformist activity took place and where it's spread, you would
Speaker 2: notice the area that was highlighted on this app goes
Speaker 2: from Massachusetts across western New York, across practically all of Ohio,
Speaker 2: and into Indiana in part. And this area was almost
Speaker 2: entirely settled by people from New England. And though we've
Speaker 2: talked about the influence of Quakers and kind of their outsides,
Speaker 2: their outsized role in American religion and thought and posture,
Speaker 2: we see the Second Great Awakening has an awful lot
Speaker 2: to do with that Puritan heritage. I like to point
Speaker 2: out where these people were from. In my overview, we
Speaker 2: have lots of New Englanders and then people from Western
Speaker 2: New York and Western New York kind of served as
Speaker 2: the frontier for those isolated, landlocked New England states that
Speaker 2: cannot expand westward. Those people went into western New York
Speaker 2: before they went off to places like Ohio. Part of
Speaker 2: Ohio is actually given to Connecticut so that their children
Speaker 2: would have a place to go and settle and they
Speaker 2: didn't have to divide the farms back in tiny little
Speaker 2: Connecticut further and further impoverishing future generations. They sent some
Speaker 2: of their people out west to northern Ohio, so that
Speaker 2: area had a Puritan culture. And it was the descendants
Speaker 2: of those people that joined the Mormon Church and went
Speaker 2: west became Millerites and Seventh day Adventists. These traditions correspond
Speaker 2: with one another. There is a reason why Southerners did
Speaker 2: not go off and become Christian scientists, Why Virginia cavaliers
Speaker 2: were not interested in this utopian city on a hill
Speaker 2: project down in Virginia. Did not join these things, did
Speaker 2: not build communes. It wasn't part of their heritage. They
Speaker 2: didn't think of religion that way. They had a more
Speaker 2: traditional Christian mindset, and they knew that the Kingdom of
Speaker 2: Heaven is not of this world. They did not sign
Speaker 2: up for utopian projects. They didn't go in for chileasm.
Speaker 2: And this is the legacy of what we call Bible
Speaker 2: Belt Christianity in America. It's an older kind of Christian belief.
Speaker 2: It's a different kind of Christian belief. Whereas these areas
Speaker 2: were describing are now the most irreligious areas of the
Speaker 2: United States. Massachusetts has the lowest level of church attendance
Speaker 2: in the United States today, and yet it was this
Speaker 2: hotbed of political or in religious vation in in our history.
Speaker 2: It's burned out that the area is still a burned
Speaker 2: over district Sadly, I think religion has a role in
Speaker 2: our lives, should have a role in our lives. We
Speaker 2: we ought to treat these things seriously. It's not just
Speaker 2: a bunch of made up stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, I I think that's an interesting point. I hope
Speaker 1: you guys at home can see how I ended up
Speaker 1: how I did.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You know that that a couple hours of George Bagby
Speaker 1: a day and you'll end up a staunch reactionary. So again,
Speaker 1: I I thank you so much for coming on. This
Speaker 1: is you know, obviously a lecture that I was very
Speaker 1: impactful on me and very interesting, and I hope we can,
Speaker 1: you know, we can have you on again. I know
Speaker 1: that you're you know, you're working on potentially you know,
Speaker 1: having a course through the Academic Agency, which you know,
Speaker 1: I think that will be really really interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's based off of kind of fear.
Speaker 2: Uh, the work that you've shown.
Speaker 1: Here is there is there anything you want to you know,
Speaker 1: shill and direct people towards in the meantime before that
Speaker 1: comes out.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have a little presence on YouTube and I
Speaker 2: want to do more there. It's it's just me reading literature.
Speaker 2: That's all that it is. It might be something else someday,
Speaker 2: but it's George Bagbee on YouTube. And also I have
Speaker 2: a Telegram channel. I call it Bagbe's Corner. It's just small,
Speaker 2: modest right now, but eventually I want to I want
Speaker 2: to share like good quotes that that I've collected. I know,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm sharing photographs that I've taken on travels and observations.
Speaker 2: It's nothing, nothing very serious. You're organized, but if you
Speaker 2: want to follow my work, those are places that you
Speaker 2: can find me for now, and I'll I'll be back
Speaker 2: on the Ja Burdens Show. I don't know how often,
Speaker 2: but come back.
Speaker 1: As often as we can manage it, I guess. But anyway, guys,
Speaker 1: as far as my stuff, you know, you know where
Speaker 1: to find me. The show is available on YouTube. It's
Speaker 1: also available as an audio only show on Apple, Spotify,
Speaker 1: you know, anywhere you listen to audio podcasts. In addition,
Speaker 1: I have very recently started an Odyssey channel. Odyssey is
Speaker 1: an alternative to YouTube that I'll be honest, I actually
Speaker 1: prefer to YouTube. It's a better system, it's a better
Speaker 1: app It is you know, much less advertising, and it's
Speaker 1: completely you can say whatever you want there, right, and
Speaker 1: so all my stuff is backed up there. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of getting a feeling that our days are numbered here
Speaker 1: and so I'm trying to push people over to the
Speaker 1: audio show and over to Odyssey, where we have a
Speaker 1: little bit more lateral freedom, so to speak. And if
Speaker 1: you guys want to support the show, I don't require it,
Speaker 1: but I do appreciate it. You know, there are different
Speaker 1: ways you can do that. Down in the description, I
Speaker 1: basically will take anything and again, guys, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming out, and remember keep your head up.
Speaker 1: The lie can't last forever.
Speaker 2: Good Night,