WEBVTT 1 00:00:01.320 --> 00:00:05.320 All right, hey everyone, this is an exclusive for the 2 00:00:05.480 --> 00:00:11.320 Audio Feed, re releasing and remastering an episode at George 3 00:00:11.320 --> 00:00:15.640 Bagbee and I did years ago one giant recording about 4 00:00:15.640 --> 00:00:21.160 the second Grade Awakening. Production values have increased significantly since then, 5 00:00:21.640 --> 00:00:26.399 so I'm re releasing it. The content is evergreen, so 6 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:28.920 this isn't new, but if you haven't heard it, I 7 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.719 highly recommend giving it a listen. And it sounds better. 8 00:00:31.800 --> 00:00:34.280 You can still find the old one, right, It's not 9 00:00:34.439 --> 00:00:39.119 like it's been unearthed, but I've been going through remastering 10 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:42.200 the best of my backlook and so this is part 11 00:00:42.240 --> 00:00:45.039 of that. Anyway, Hope you guys are having a good Saturday. 12 00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:48.320 Oh by the way, this is a bonus. You're still 13 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:51.399 getting five brand new episodes, but I figured I might 14 00:00:51.439 --> 00:00:53.280 as well throw this up as I'm going back through 15 00:00:53.399 --> 00:00:57.240 and fixing everything. Anyway, Hope you're doing well and anyway, 16 00:00:57.520 --> 00:01:02.320 onto the show. All right, George Bagbee, welcome back to 17 00:01:02.320 --> 00:01:03.159 The Jay Burdens Show. 18 00:01:03.159 --> 00:01:06.359 How are you doing. It's great to be back. I'm 19 00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:08.480 very happy to be on tonight. 20 00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:12.319 Yeah, I'm I'm very happy to have you on as well. 21 00:01:12.359 --> 00:01:14.560 I know obviously we've been talking behind the scenes, but 22 00:01:14.599 --> 00:01:17.159 It's good to have another, you know, public conversation because 23 00:01:17.200 --> 00:01:19.400 the last one's I mean, they got a really positive reaction, 24 00:01:19.439 --> 00:01:21.560 and I think everyone's happy to see you back on. 25 00:01:22.719 --> 00:01:26.879 Yeah, I had to take a hiatus the io Saarn 26 00:01:27.159 --> 00:01:31.879 was on me. But the danger now has passed in 27 00:01:32.200 --> 00:01:36.519 a very decisive way. So I'm back on and I'm 28 00:01:36.640 --> 00:01:39.200 likely to be doing a lot more now I've been 29 00:01:39.439 --> 00:01:41.040 freed up, as it were. 30 00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:45.159 Well good, I'm I'm obviously, I'm I'm excited for that. 31 00:01:45.280 --> 00:01:47.959 You know, I've selfishly, at the very least, I'm glad 32 00:01:47.959 --> 00:01:49.159 you have a little bit more free time. 33 00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:53.640 And I've got a really fun project that I really 34 00:01:53.640 --> 00:01:57.359 hope to be working on. I don't think I don't 35 00:01:57.400 --> 00:01:59.480 think he'd mind me saying so, but I've been and 36 00:01:59.519 --> 00:02:04.400 taught talks with academic agent about producing an American history 37 00:02:04.439 --> 00:02:09.120 course for the academic Agency, and I have free time 38 00:02:09.120 --> 00:02:14.840 to do that now, surprisingly unexpectedly, and I'm gonna be 39 00:02:14.879 --> 00:02:20.520 working on that, I think. I think after after I 40 00:02:20.560 --> 00:02:23.400 get some things done around around the house here, I 41 00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:27.759 might start working on that next week. So I'll keep 42 00:02:27.800 --> 00:02:31.400 you posted about that, and when when it's finished, I 43 00:02:31.479 --> 00:02:33.759 mean to do some advertising. I want people to know 44 00:02:33.800 --> 00:02:36.759 about it, because that's my thing. My thing is American history. 45 00:02:37.759 --> 00:02:40.759 Well, and obviously you know most of the people who've 46 00:02:40.960 --> 00:02:44.159 you heard us speak before know that you were my 47 00:02:44.759 --> 00:02:47.840 history teacher, and so that that kind of neatly, neatly 48 00:02:47.879 --> 00:02:51.919 segues into our topic for the evening, which is kind 49 00:02:51.919 --> 00:02:54.639 of a condensed version of a lecture that you gave 50 00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:57.280 me in school. And there's one that was particularly impactful. 51 00:02:57.280 --> 00:03:00.400 It's one that I remember to this day. But do 52 00:03:00.479 --> 00:03:03.080 you want to just kind of, I guess, introduce our 53 00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:04.639 topic for the evening and then I can bring up 54 00:03:04.639 --> 00:03:05.319 the slides after that. 55 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:11.520 Absolutely. So I made an editorial choice this year because 56 00:03:11.560 --> 00:03:15.680 I was teaching American history to this year to a 57 00:03:15.719 --> 00:03:19.759 high school class, and I decided to start with this lecture. 58 00:03:20.039 --> 00:03:22.319 To start with this lesson, I was supposed to start 59 00:03:22.360 --> 00:03:26.919 with the Civil War, and I decided to start to 60 00:03:27.400 --> 00:03:32.039 frame the Civil War with this particular set of lessons. 61 00:03:32.199 --> 00:03:35.639 I usually condense this one down to one lecture. I 62 00:03:35.680 --> 00:03:38.400 try to make it fit in an hour and a 63 00:03:38.439 --> 00:03:42.599 half block period, which is probably what you got when 64 00:03:42.639 --> 00:03:47.159 you went through my class, but it's it definitely merits 65 00:03:47.199 --> 00:03:49.639 more time than that, and it's one of my favorite subjects. 66 00:03:49.759 --> 00:03:53.800 It's about the second Great Awakening in the north of 67 00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:57.800 the United States in the decades just before the Civil War. 68 00:03:58.319 --> 00:04:03.719 So if we judge it generously, we can say last 69 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:08.759 from eighteen hundred to eighteen sixty roughly, and it's the 70 00:04:08.800 --> 00:04:12.680 second grade Awakening. We have two periods that we call 71 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:15.800 great Awakenings in American history. The first period is right 72 00:04:15.879 --> 00:04:19.360 before the War for Independence. We have people like George 73 00:04:19.399 --> 00:04:24.839 Whitfield and the Wesley brothers who are doing a lot 74 00:04:24.839 --> 00:04:30.439 of things in English speaking Protestant circles. We see the 75 00:04:30.480 --> 00:04:35.879 foundation of what becomes the Methodist Church. And this is 76 00:04:35.879 --> 00:04:39.480 an interesting movement. The first Great Awakening is a movement 77 00:04:39.639 --> 00:04:45.439 towards a low church sort of experience, a more congregational 78 00:04:45.720 --> 00:04:51.839 led church government. In a lot of American circles, it 79 00:04:51.959 --> 00:04:56.399 meant a revival among the Baptists and a great growth 80 00:04:56.519 --> 00:05:03.480 among Baptists who are dissenter like all purpose dissenters, and 81 00:05:03.639 --> 00:05:11.040 a movement away from organized legacy Protestant denominations. Well, in 82 00:05:11.079 --> 00:05:14.160 the second grade Awakening, we kind of see a a 83 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:19.199 repeat of that, but it goes in very strange directions. 84 00:05:20.439 --> 00:05:23.600 So these these things, the first and second grade Awakening. 85 00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:26.959 They do have some things in common, but the second 86 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:33.160 grade Awakening is much more weird, much more alien. Yet 87 00:05:33.240 --> 00:05:36.360 it gives us. It gives us a lot of institutions 88 00:05:36.560 --> 00:05:42.120 and beliefs and even consumer products that surprise us that 89 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:49.120 they've become very American elements in the Western world. Even 90 00:05:49.199 --> 00:05:53.600 they even have currency well outside of America now. So 91 00:05:53.720 --> 00:05:55.480 the lesson is the second grade Awakening. 92 00:05:56.360 --> 00:05:58.399 So that's a that's a pretty good intro to it. 93 00:05:58.639 --> 00:06:02.600 So if you could, I guess kind of actually, you 94 00:06:02.600 --> 00:06:04.439 know what, let's just go straight to the slides. We 95 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:07.160 can go through with your presentation instead of me asking questions. 96 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:09.120 So just give me a second to bring that up. 97 00:06:09.519 --> 00:06:17.199 And all right, so here's the first line. 98 00:06:17.199 --> 00:06:17.839 Can y'll see this? 99 00:06:19.319 --> 00:06:21.639 Yes, I can see it? Oh, perfect, all right? Should 100 00:06:21.639 --> 00:06:22.560 I go to the first side? 101 00:06:22.839 --> 00:06:29.800 Sure, So, as I frequently do in my lectures in history, 102 00:06:29.879 --> 00:06:35.160 I do a lot of comparisons and contrasts, and especially 103 00:06:35.240 --> 00:06:38.439 leading right up to the Civil War, it makes sense 104 00:06:38.480 --> 00:06:40.680 to do a lot of peace contrasts with the North 105 00:06:40.720 --> 00:06:43.319 and the South. And this is something about the Second 106 00:06:43.319 --> 00:06:48.040 Great Awakening that makes it very unique in American history 107 00:06:48.160 --> 00:06:52.160 is that it's part of the sectional conflict, especially that 108 00:06:52.279 --> 00:06:56.319 it's happening right before the greatest war in American history, 109 00:06:56.360 --> 00:06:59.519 the biggest sacrifice and struggle in American history, the contest 110 00:06:59.519 --> 00:07:03.519 between the no within the South. So here I'm kind 111 00:07:03.519 --> 00:07:06.399 of reviewing things that I've been making a point of 112 00:07:06.759 --> 00:07:10.839 in my class up until this point. The North has 113 00:07:11.120 --> 00:07:15.360 practically all the cities, with the exception of New Orleans. 114 00:07:15.480 --> 00:07:18.839 Louisiana is always so exceptional. New Orleans is rebably the 115 00:07:18.879 --> 00:07:21.600 only city of any size in the South. The rest 116 00:07:21.600 --> 00:07:24.480 of the South is very rural. The North has an 117 00:07:24.519 --> 00:07:29.000 industrial base. The North is the center of the merchant marine. 118 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:33.560 Practically all ocean going ships are owned and operated out 119 00:07:33.600 --> 00:07:36.720 of the North. They dock in the South. The South 120 00:07:36.800 --> 00:07:40.079 has a lot of commerce. But those aren't Southerners on 121 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:44.560 those ships. Those aren't Southerners manning those ships. And by 122 00:07:44.600 --> 00:07:48.800 the way, aren't they aren't Southerners bringing the slaves over 123 00:07:48.879 --> 00:07:52.399 back when the slave trade was legal. Those were Northerners 124 00:07:52.399 --> 00:07:56.759 and foreigners mostly doing that. The Southern trend is agricultural. 125 00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:00.920 The vast majority of Southerners are directly engagement agriculture on 126 00:08:00.920 --> 00:08:06.319 some level. So the northern trend is what I could 127 00:08:06.399 --> 00:08:10.160 characterize a modern We're going to talk more about what 128 00:08:10.279 --> 00:08:16.120 modern is, what modernism is. What are these people talking 129 00:08:16.160 --> 00:08:21.839 about when they say they have modern ideas. It is 130 00:08:21.879 --> 00:08:27.120 strongly related to the rejection of traditional beliefs, traditional ways 131 00:08:27.160 --> 00:08:34.240 of living in favor of new fangled ways. The South is, 132 00:08:34.960 --> 00:08:40.679 in contrast traditional. Now, we could go on about this contrast. 133 00:08:40.879 --> 00:08:45.279 I bookend this lecture with another lecture in the series 134 00:08:46.039 --> 00:08:50.919 about what Richard M. Weaver called the older religiousness of 135 00:08:50.960 --> 00:08:55.799 the South, and this is something that the Vanderbilt Agrarians 136 00:08:55.960 --> 00:09:00.559 also commemorated in their book. I'll take my stand end 137 00:09:00.759 --> 00:09:06.279 about how the South is this even even a medieval 138 00:09:06.480 --> 00:09:11.080 sort of holdout of Christendom. The South does not experience 139 00:09:11.720 --> 00:09:17.679 these religious innovations in this period. The South remains tied 140 00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:23.720 to its older religious beliefs, which is mostly low Church Protestantism, 141 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:28.039 mostly Baptists and Methodists. Actually, but they don't they don't 142 00:09:28.360 --> 00:09:32.720 under they don't undergo this this period of religious innovation 143 00:09:32.919 --> 00:09:37.600 and hysteria and fanaticism that the North experiences during this time. 144 00:09:40.240 --> 00:09:46.600 So the Northern trend is also centralized economically, you know, 145 00:09:46.679 --> 00:09:51.679 you you have these these big uh trade and manufacturing 146 00:09:51.759 --> 00:09:58.120 centers in the North major port cities uh Boston, Philadelphia, 147 00:09:59.399 --> 00:10:05.440 New York City, Cincinnati, Chicago, places like that, Whereas the 148 00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:08.919 Southern trend is very decentralized. There are lots of local 149 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:15.440 centers of influence and authority, and they are populated mostly 150 00:10:15.480 --> 00:10:19.639 by people and engaged in agriculture. So the Southern trend 151 00:10:20.039 --> 00:10:23.440 has always been with or had always been up until 152 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:26.559 this point, it had always been with centers of influence 153 00:10:26.600 --> 00:10:31.879 and authority in regions and in states. So the Northern trend, 154 00:10:31.919 --> 00:10:37.080 you have this popularity of Northerners thinking of the Union 155 00:10:37.600 --> 00:10:42.000 as the final governmental authority in all matters in which 156 00:10:42.039 --> 00:10:46.559 people should be united, and they increasingly think that Americans 157 00:10:46.559 --> 00:10:50.039 should be on the same page about more and more things. 158 00:10:50.519 --> 00:10:55.039 Their culture in the North, the political culture in the North, 159 00:10:55.399 --> 00:10:59.919 mirrors their economic experience, and that it becomes more centralized 160 00:11:00.480 --> 00:11:08.360 and less diverse in a certain sense. In in the 161 00:11:08.399 --> 00:11:11.720 South of the word that we use to describe this 162 00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:16.399 decentralization and many many local centers of influence and authority, 163 00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:20.279 The old American term for that is a federal vision 164 00:11:20.879 --> 00:11:28.960 of politics. American federalism is also termed a vision of 165 00:11:29.240 --> 00:11:34.399 states' rights, where states have the final authority on what 166 00:11:34.600 --> 00:11:40.559 the constitution means, what what is constitutional law. You have 167 00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:44.399 a lot of Southern states talking about nullifying federal laws, 168 00:11:45.120 --> 00:11:50.159 believing that they have a constitutional mandate to do that, 169 00:11:50.679 --> 00:11:56.320 and many Southerners also saying from from even the ratification 170 00:11:56.519 --> 00:12:02.200 of the Constitution forward, the states have the right to 171 00:12:02.279 --> 00:12:06.080 leave the Union because the center of authority lies in 172 00:12:06.519 --> 00:12:10.559 regions and localities, not in a central federal government created 173 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:16.120 by those states, by those regions. So that's that's a 174 00:12:16.159 --> 00:12:21.360 federal vision, and that's that's rather what Thomas Jefferson meant 175 00:12:21.440 --> 00:12:25.159 when when he was he was talking about republicanism and such. 176 00:12:25.240 --> 00:12:31.159 Jefferson has a lot to do with with those ideas. Anyway. 177 00:12:32.200 --> 00:12:35.320 In the North, during during these decades before the Civil War, 178 00:12:35.399 --> 00:12:40.000 we see this growth of new religious groups, and in 179 00:12:40.039 --> 00:12:45.440 the South you see a faithfulness to their old religious formulas, 180 00:12:46.159 --> 00:12:49.639 and you see you also, kind of amusingly, you see 181 00:12:49.639 --> 00:12:53.080 a lot of alarm and shock in dismay in the 182 00:12:53.159 --> 00:12:56.919 South about what's going on in the North. During these years, 183 00:12:57.120 --> 00:13:01.799 Southerners are are writing observation of these Northern religious groups, 184 00:13:02.120 --> 00:13:06.279 kind of commenting, these people are going and sane. Can 185 00:13:06.320 --> 00:13:08.960 we really be in a union with people like this, 186 00:13:09.120 --> 00:13:13.279 who who believe such such radical, strange things. 187 00:13:15.799 --> 00:13:19.240 How much of this had to do with the different 188 00:13:19.519 --> 00:13:24.919 groups that that I guess emigrated or are settled the 189 00:13:24.919 --> 00:13:27.080 different parts of the of the of the of the 190 00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:31.519 Old Americ, of the original thirteen colonies. Sorry I jumbled that, 191 00:13:31.639 --> 00:13:33.480 But how much of that had to do with like 192 00:13:33.519 --> 00:13:35.279 the different I guess like groups that made it up, 193 00:13:35.320 --> 00:13:37.879 and specifically like the religious groups and where they settled. 194 00:13:37.919 --> 00:13:39.279 I guess was the best way to say that. 195 00:13:40.759 --> 00:13:45.879 I think that these things are strongly connected, and many 196 00:13:45.879 --> 00:13:49.480 people in our in our circles are aware of the 197 00:13:49.480 --> 00:13:56.200 great history book Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fisher. One 198 00:13:56.200 --> 00:13:58.320 of the things that I did, and I'm sure you 199 00:13:58.399 --> 00:14:03.039 remember this, I I edited chapters from Albion's Seed and 200 00:14:03.080 --> 00:14:06.600 I distributed it to my history students. And I've been 201 00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:11.679 doing that ever since I've started teaching American history. I 202 00:14:11.799 --> 00:14:16.240 called them the folk Ways Presentations. And it wasn't just 203 00:14:16.399 --> 00:14:20.080 chapters from Albion's Seed. I've been working really hard to 204 00:14:20.120 --> 00:14:26.559 build chapters or build handouts for my other students about 205 00:14:26.639 --> 00:14:31.840 other groups in the United States, immigrant groups for instance, 206 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:37.440 and their characteristics, but the predominant characteristics in American history 207 00:14:37.480 --> 00:14:42.559 come from the old Anglo American stock. We have other 208 00:14:42.799 --> 00:14:47.639 very important groups in American history. I am not denying 209 00:14:47.799 --> 00:14:50.879 their influence. I'm not denying their importance. I'm not denying 210 00:14:50.879 --> 00:14:55.320 their prevalence or anything. I really like them and appreciate them. 211 00:14:55.600 --> 00:15:01.720 The Irish, Americans, the Germans, there are other major influences. 212 00:15:01.759 --> 00:15:06.440 But the Anglo American groups found themselves in conflict here 213 00:15:06.840 --> 00:15:10.480 just as they had been in conflict back in England. 214 00:15:11.519 --> 00:15:18.919 Even though they're all Anglos, they are differentiated by region 215 00:15:19.240 --> 00:15:24.240 of England, by religious tradition, and by many other things 216 00:15:24.480 --> 00:15:31.440 that Fisher documents in his book. They have different They've 217 00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:36.039 got different food, they live in different housing. The religious 218 00:15:36.080 --> 00:15:40.759 differences are are major. He he has four different groups 219 00:15:40.799 --> 00:15:46.399 that he talks about, Quakers, Puritans, the Virginia Cavaliers, and 220 00:15:46.600 --> 00:15:50.320 the famous scotch Irish, who go mostly to the back 221 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:56.360 country to the Appalachians. So of those of those four, 222 00:15:56.480 --> 00:16:00.360 the scotch Irish and the Cavaliers form what we what 223 00:16:00.399 --> 00:16:08.840 we come to see as Southern civilization. The Northerners and 224 00:16:08.879 --> 00:16:12.559 Southerners obviously find themselves in conflict with one another about 225 00:16:12.600 --> 00:16:18.279 a great many things, not just not just political economic 226 00:16:19.039 --> 00:16:26.039 beliefs about slavery, but also beliefs about the past. What 227 00:16:26.200 --> 00:16:30.559 do we do with our heritage? Is there a constructive 228 00:16:30.679 --> 00:16:35.399 use for it? Must it be rejected in some radical way? 229 00:16:35.600 --> 00:16:39.679 Must we must we have some kind of purgation of 230 00:16:40.360 --> 00:16:44.879 religious heritage or cultural heritage. What One of the things 231 00:16:44.879 --> 00:16:49.919 that makes the North stand out from colonial days is 232 00:16:50.639 --> 00:16:57.320 the agreement among Quakers and Puritans that their religious heritage 233 00:16:57.919 --> 00:17:04.599 in England can cannot be salvaged. It basically needs to 234 00:17:04.680 --> 00:17:08.799 be redone from top to bottom. It needs to be 235 00:17:09.640 --> 00:17:16.200 demolished and completely renovated, completely rebuilt. The term Puritan, for instance, 236 00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:21.559 it refers to their religious belief that the Church of 237 00:17:21.640 --> 00:17:26.559 England was deeply tainted by Roman Catholic beliefs and practices 238 00:17:27.039 --> 00:17:33.960 and must be purified. And that's a very radical position. 239 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:38.759 The Puritans rejected the church calendar. They would punish people 240 00:17:38.839 --> 00:17:45.359 that celebrated Christmas. These are people that took this separatism 241 00:17:46.079 --> 00:17:51.119 and this purgative view of their religious past and their 242 00:17:51.559 --> 00:17:57.559 culture as English, as English people. They wanted to get 243 00:17:57.680 --> 00:18:02.119 rid of old traditions, wanted to get rid of old 244 00:18:02.200 --> 00:18:06.839 beliefs because they believed those things were evil. They believed 245 00:18:06.880 --> 00:18:10.440 that Roman Catholicism was of the devil, which is one 246 00:18:10.480 --> 00:18:15.000 of the reasons why they punished people that observed these things, 247 00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:20.599 even people who claim to be Protestants in all other respects. 248 00:18:21.240 --> 00:18:24.559 So these are these traits do have a lot to 249 00:18:24.640 --> 00:18:27.079 do with the things we see in the second grade 250 00:18:27.079 --> 00:18:32.880 Awakening and the difference we see between northern and southern 251 00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:34.160 religious traditions. 252 00:18:36.319 --> 00:18:39.200 Well, it's like that old line, right that the American 253 00:18:39.359 --> 00:18:42.079 the War between the States should be understood as a 254 00:18:42.079 --> 00:18:45.000 sequel to the to the British Civil War, you know, 255 00:18:45.079 --> 00:18:49.599 because essentially you have those men's descendants fighting and out again, 256 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:51.200 you know, just across the ocean. 257 00:18:51.960 --> 00:18:57.799 Absolutely, and that's that is a classic old interpretation of 258 00:18:57.880 --> 00:18:59.960 the American Civil War. You have a lot of Americans 259 00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:05.480 and also foreign observers saying this is the Anglo version 260 00:19:06.200 --> 00:19:10.079 of the repetition of history. You know, you look at 261 00:19:10.119 --> 00:19:13.960 the history of France, and it seems that the French 262 00:19:14.200 --> 00:19:20.240 reenact dramamatic episodes from their history over and over again. 263 00:19:21.279 --> 00:19:24.839 You know, the French Revolution and then the Revolution in 264 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:29.440 eighteen forty eight, or the Paris Commune in the Franco 265 00:19:29.440 --> 00:19:32.000 Prussian War. These things do seem to have a lot 266 00:19:32.039 --> 00:19:35.279 in common. But we can look at the history of 267 00:19:35.319 --> 00:19:38.880 Anglo Americans in England and in the United States, and 268 00:19:39.039 --> 00:19:43.039 we see some commonalities there too. Cavaliers and roundheads, we 269 00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:45.440 can see them in both places. 270 00:19:47.680 --> 00:19:49.519 All right, should I go to the next side now? 271 00:19:50.119 --> 00:19:58.680 Yes? Please? Okay? So the Second Great Awakening is initially 272 00:19:58.799 --> 00:20:06.359 characterized by a popularity of revival meetings. Evangelists would travel around, 273 00:20:07.240 --> 00:20:09.920 mostly in the North. Now this did happen in the 274 00:20:09.960 --> 00:20:15.440 South as well. The camp meetings did what they did 275 00:20:15.559 --> 00:20:18.920 in the First Great Awakening. They seemed to swell the 276 00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:24.960 ranks of established low church Protestants in the South, Baptists 277 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:28.720 and Methodists for the most part. If we wanted to 278 00:20:28.759 --> 00:20:34.400 make a comparison these days, we would say it would 279 00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:40.720 be like Pentecostal worship or something the growth of Pentecostal sex. 280 00:20:43.039 --> 00:20:47.119 These are emotional responses that people are getting in the 281 00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:53.400 camp meeting atmosphere. In the North, the camp meetings seemed 282 00:20:53.480 --> 00:21:01.119 to produce rather different results, much more innovative results. So 283 00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:04.680 what happens is they are traveling evangelists. They go from 284 00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:08.440 place to place. They may stay in one place for 285 00:21:08.640 --> 00:21:15.519 a week or so, give sermons every night, get a 286 00:21:15.559 --> 00:21:21.400 response from the audience. One of one of the innovations 287 00:21:21.400 --> 00:21:25.319 that come out of the Second Grade Awakening camp meetings 288 00:21:25.960 --> 00:21:33.759 is the altar call, which many American Christians now associate 289 00:21:33.920 --> 00:21:42.359 strongly with normalcy or tradition. In the tradition I come 290 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:49.559 from the pastors that I grew up knowing, all Southern Baptists. 291 00:21:50.079 --> 00:21:55.680 That's that's the tradition of my birth. Those pastors would 292 00:21:55.720 --> 00:22:00.400 talk among themselves with pride that they had never given 293 00:22:00.519 --> 00:22:07.119 a sermon without an alter call, and they portrayed themselves 294 00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:11.720 as very traditional, old fashioned sorts of Baptists. They took 295 00:22:11.799 --> 00:22:19.559 that as a point of authority. Yet the alter call 296 00:22:19.720 --> 00:22:22.599 is something that becomes popular with the Second Grade Awakening. 297 00:22:22.640 --> 00:22:25.119 We can actually trace its origin and such, and it 298 00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:28.559 was controversial at the time. The alter call is where 299 00:22:28.640 --> 00:22:32.200 there is emotional music played at the end of a service. 300 00:22:33.079 --> 00:22:40.119 The preacher makes an impassioned declaration for the members of 301 00:22:40.160 --> 00:22:45.519 the congregation to dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ. They 302 00:22:45.880 --> 00:22:49.880 sing an emotional chorus, and they may sing the chorus 303 00:22:49.960 --> 00:22:54.680 for many stanzas. This could go on for a while, 304 00:22:54.880 --> 00:22:59.599 especially if the response has traction. You know, there are 305 00:22:59.599 --> 00:23:03.319 a lot of peace people responding, people coming down to 306 00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:06.279 the altar at the at the foot of the pulpit, 307 00:23:06.519 --> 00:23:09.039 which is which is a really interesting connection there, the 308 00:23:09.519 --> 00:23:14.759 pulpit and the altar kind of unified in this kind 309 00:23:14.799 --> 00:23:20.799 of of religious expression. And I am Eastern Orthodox now, 310 00:23:21.200 --> 00:23:25.079 and the idea of the pulpit and the altar being 311 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:30.400 in any sort of even proximity to one another is 312 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:34.640 really shocking to me now, like that that is a 313 00:23:34.839 --> 00:23:39.720 really different kind of expression, uh, and different sort of symbolism. 314 00:23:40.240 --> 00:23:43.680 I think. I think Roman Catholics and and many Liturgical 315 00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:48.079 Protestants would would recognize that as a difference as well. 316 00:23:48.240 --> 00:23:52.599 I know in many Presbyterian churches the pulpit is off 317 00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:54.119 to the side, it's not in the center. 318 00:23:56.759 --> 00:23:59.519 Yes, in my experience that is that's the case, right, 319 00:23:59.559 --> 00:24:00.960 I mean, you know where I go to church, so 320 00:24:01.079 --> 00:24:03.319 that that's you know, very much, very much true in 321 00:24:03.319 --> 00:24:04.319 my experience at least. 322 00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:11.400 Indeed, think of old fashioned American Protestant church saying in 323 00:24:11.519 --> 00:24:18.680 Charleston or Philadelphia or some old place, a very ornate 324 00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:23.799 wooden box, you know, with a little twirling staircase going 325 00:24:23.839 --> 00:24:26.599 up to it or something over on the right hand 326 00:24:26.640 --> 00:24:31.119 side or the left hand side, of a church. That's 327 00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:34.480 that's the sort of thing, and that's that would fit 328 00:24:34.599 --> 00:24:38.359 with my tradition. More or less, the homily is given 329 00:24:38.359 --> 00:24:40.160 from the side. And also the homily is not the 330 00:24:40.160 --> 00:24:44.680 main point of the service. The Eucharist is. The homily 331 00:24:44.680 --> 00:24:48.400 could be omitted, you know, it's it's not not even 332 00:24:48.440 --> 00:24:51.720 a necessary part. But with the camp meeting, it's all 333 00:24:51.759 --> 00:24:55.839 about the the homily. It's about the speaker. It's about 334 00:24:55.880 --> 00:25:02.039 the evangelist who is talking and explaining scripture or some 335 00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:06.599 point of theology, or eventually it came to be social 336 00:25:06.680 --> 00:25:11.480 causes that the evangelist was focusing on in the meetings 337 00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:18.079 and asking people to dedicate themselves to a cause, maybe 338 00:25:18.079 --> 00:25:20.920 in the name of Jesus. But it seems to be 339 00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:28.480 auxiliary to traditional Christianity or separate from traditional Christianity. You 340 00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:30.000 can advance the slide down. 341 00:25:32.240 --> 00:25:36.119 Short, just give me a second. 342 00:25:38.839 --> 00:25:43.319 So in the North, well and in the South as well, 343 00:25:43.720 --> 00:25:48.000 to the extent the second grade Awakening is influential there. 344 00:25:48.279 --> 00:25:54.079 It's a movement away from organized religion. There are lots 345 00:25:54.079 --> 00:25:59.599 of people creating new religious groups. Not all of these 346 00:25:59.640 --> 00:26:06.000 groups are are in fact religious in focus, so some 347 00:26:06.119 --> 00:26:13.839 of them are more humanist, deistical focused on social causes, 348 00:26:14.160 --> 00:26:16.920 maybe exclusively. We're going to look at a couple of 349 00:26:16.960 --> 00:26:20.559 those that these are outliers. They're they're not very popular, 350 00:26:22.839 --> 00:26:26.279 but they're they're nevertheless influential. They tended to have a 351 00:26:26.319 --> 00:26:30.680 lot of literary people involved, so they were popular for that. 352 00:26:31.000 --> 00:26:36.039 But it's a movement away from the legacy denominations, if 353 00:26:36.079 --> 00:26:43.079 you will. It is Episcopalians becoming Methodists, it is Methodists 354 00:26:43.119 --> 00:26:53.240 becoming Baptists, it is Baptists becoming more narrow sectarians. And 355 00:26:53.400 --> 00:26:57.079 I'm not talking about what what we what we know 356 00:26:57.200 --> 00:26:59.799 of today in America. We talk a lot about the 357 00:27:00.079 --> 00:27:04.079 non denominational Christians. That's not what I'm talking about in 358 00:27:04.240 --> 00:27:10.079 this instance. In this case, the people that fall away 359 00:27:10.160 --> 00:27:14.720 from organized religion altogether are coming up with their own 360 00:27:17.079 --> 00:27:21.880 broad organizations. We're going to see some of them had 361 00:27:21.880 --> 00:27:26.039 great ambitions on that front that never bore fruit, and 362 00:27:26.200 --> 00:27:30.920 some of them created some might say denominations, some might 363 00:27:30.960 --> 00:27:39.799 say new religions from scratch during this time. Now, I 364 00:27:39.839 --> 00:27:43.759 think that this is fascinating and I take this very seriously. 365 00:27:44.960 --> 00:27:49.440 Another thing that I do is I teach Greek literature, 366 00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:54.519 ancient Greek literature. I teach Homer and Sophocles and Avid 367 00:27:54.599 --> 00:27:58.079 and Herodotus and things like that. And one thing that 368 00:27:58.119 --> 00:28:01.119 I'm always trying to do my students there is I 369 00:28:01.200 --> 00:28:06.960 really want them to take paganism seriously. One of one 370 00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:11.680 of my pet peeves is I strongly dislike the modern 371 00:28:11.839 --> 00:28:19.359 approach to the Oracle at Delphi, where scoffing, mocking moderns, 372 00:28:19.799 --> 00:28:25.079 who typically don't know anything about any religious tradition, maybe 373 00:28:25.359 --> 00:28:29.079 nothing about their own or anybody else's necessarily they kind 374 00:28:29.079 --> 00:28:31.519 of take a new atheist approach and say, oh, it's 375 00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:35.400 all superstition, it's all nonsense. You know, sophisticated people would 376 00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:40.119 never believe these things, And they talk about the oracle 377 00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:45.960 at Delphi getting high off of gases and then babbling 378 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:50.759 away in some hallucination and the priests making money on this. 379 00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:54.319 On the side, there are a great many reasons to 380 00:28:54.559 --> 00:29:00.000 dismiss that interpretation and take the oracle seriously. Just because 381 00:29:00.079 --> 00:29:03.640 these people are pagans doesn't mean that there aren't spirits involved. 382 00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:06.839 I'm a Christian and I believe in the spiritual world. 383 00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:08.720 It's one of the first things we say. I'm a 384 00:29:08.920 --> 00:29:14.200 Nicene Creed, right, I believe in that God created all 385 00:29:14.240 --> 00:29:19.480 of it visible and invisible, and it wouldn't surprise me 386 00:29:19.519 --> 00:29:23.000 at all if the Pagans were actually communing with spirits 387 00:29:23.079 --> 00:29:28.680 and getting information from spirits. But I bring that kind 388 00:29:28.759 --> 00:29:31.920 of sensibility, that that sort of outlook into the second 389 00:29:31.960 --> 00:29:37.640 grade Awakening. I am not entirely sure that the founders 390 00:29:37.720 --> 00:29:45.720 of Mormonism were Charlatan's for instance. I am willing to 391 00:29:46.799 --> 00:29:51.279 accept the possibility. I believe it is certainly possible for 392 00:29:51.440 --> 00:29:55.039 people to talk to spirits. I believe that as an 393 00:29:55.079 --> 00:30:01.759 article of faith. I personally had experience with such things myself. 394 00:30:01.839 --> 00:30:08.000 But that's beside the point. Joseph Smith may have actually 395 00:30:08.039 --> 00:30:13.079 received messages from spirits, and I think they were liars. 396 00:30:14.480 --> 00:30:16.079 That's one of the reasons why we're not supposed to 397 00:30:16.119 --> 00:30:18.720 mess with spirits, is because we have no idea how 398 00:30:18.759 --> 00:30:25.440 to distinguish between an angel and a devil. But this 399 00:30:25.599 --> 00:30:28.160 is a very mysterious time in American history where there 400 00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:33.000 are new religions coming into being, and these religions are 401 00:30:33.039 --> 00:30:35.880 still with us today, and some of them have lots 402 00:30:35.920 --> 00:30:41.000 of Christian trappings. I think that it's a productive question 403 00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:46.640 to ask, would you consider this group Christian? Do they 404 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:51.759 believe enough Christian things. Some of them are more likely 405 00:30:51.839 --> 00:30:55.119 candidates than others. Maybe we can still call them Christian 406 00:30:55.160 --> 00:30:58.480 in some sense, but others I think have obviously gone 407 00:30:58.519 --> 00:30:59.240 too far away. 408 00:31:00.599 --> 00:31:03.279 Well, right, And there's a there's a dialogue around this, 409 00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:06.319 you know that people will say like, oh, you know, 410 00:31:06.400 --> 00:31:09.680 you Christians will engage in this no true Scotsman fallacy, 411 00:31:10.160 --> 00:31:12.880 right like, oh, they weren't really Christians. And look, don't 412 00:31:12.880 --> 00:31:14.640 get me wrong, there's there's a whole lot of that, 413 00:31:14.880 --> 00:31:16.799 you know, especially now you see it in the more 414 00:31:16.839 --> 00:31:20.119 like yeah, excuse me, kind of like out there like 415 00:31:20.359 --> 00:31:23.880 charismatic style, you know, evangelicals, right like if you're not 416 00:31:24.480 --> 00:31:27.279 you know, from the Bob Jones Memorial Baptist Church, well 417 00:31:27.279 --> 00:31:30.200 then you're you're hell abound. But nonetheless, and I kind 418 00:31:30.200 --> 00:31:32.440 of know where this is going. You know, there's enough 419 00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:34.680 people and there's enough different groups in here that are 420 00:31:34.720 --> 00:31:38.759 really quite odd, you know, that are like technically Christian 421 00:31:38.839 --> 00:31:41.640 like they would say so. But yes, there comes a 422 00:31:41.680 --> 00:31:45.880 certain point where it's like, well, okay, like could do 423 00:31:45.920 --> 00:31:46.880 you really still apply? 424 00:31:47.480 --> 00:31:47.680 You know? 425 00:31:47.880 --> 00:31:50.000 And I guess we'll get into that more specifically talking 426 00:31:50.039 --> 00:31:52.039 about some of these different groups, but I very much 427 00:31:52.039 --> 00:31:53.960 see your point, because it is an interesting question. 428 00:31:55.799 --> 00:31:59.680 It's a curious one, and it's it can get kind 429 00:31:59.680 --> 00:32:05.440 of fuh trading with with some Protestant sex because you 430 00:32:05.480 --> 00:32:09.839 can talk to them about the essentials of belief and 431 00:32:09.839 --> 00:32:13.880 and more often than not, I found that I can 432 00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:18.720 work in organizations with lots of low church Protestants. They 433 00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:22.400 tend to be hesitant about things like the Creed, but 434 00:32:23.279 --> 00:32:25.279 when you sit down with them and talk it out, 435 00:32:25.799 --> 00:32:29.000 it's just that they don't they don't want to have 436 00:32:29.799 --> 00:32:33.039 an old Creed with some unfamiliar words in it, but 437 00:32:33.039 --> 00:32:37.960 it but it turns out they believe everything in the Creed. Uh. 438 00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:40.400 And we we we might be getting slightly off topic 439 00:32:40.440 --> 00:32:43.559 because we we did cover this in another conversation you 440 00:32:43.599 --> 00:32:47.279 and I had on you know, on evangelicals and uh 441 00:32:47.319 --> 00:32:50.200 anti intellectualism. And I'm not trying to cut us off, 442 00:32:50.440 --> 00:32:52.960 you know, because that is an conversation. But we've got 443 00:32:53.000 --> 00:32:55.039 a lot of slides, and uh, I do want to 444 00:32:55.039 --> 00:32:57.400 get this done in one in one shot, so to speak. 445 00:32:58.480 --> 00:33:05.079 Yes, let's let's proceed. Okay. So one of the things 446 00:33:05.119 --> 00:33:08.279 I did with with my slideshow here I cut out 447 00:33:08.400 --> 00:33:11.640 most of the text, but I did want to share 448 00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:17.720 some some quotes and and some bullet points with our 449 00:33:17.759 --> 00:33:20.920 audience here. And I'm not going to delabor this. It's 450 00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:24.480 not like you're taking notes on this. But I did 451 00:33:24.519 --> 00:33:27.720 make a mistake in a previous stream with you. I 452 00:33:27.720 --> 00:33:33.519 think I mistook Charles Finney for Charles Spurgeon. But if 453 00:33:33.920 --> 00:33:40.599 but yes, obviously Spurgeon was an Englishman. But I I 454 00:33:40.640 --> 00:33:43.319 did apologize to those that that pointed that out. I 455 00:33:43.400 --> 00:33:46.559 made a stream, well, I made I made a video, 456 00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:49.799 a solo video of my own, concerning that, just because 457 00:33:49.799 --> 00:33:52.839 I wanted to rectify that that was an embarrassing error 458 00:33:52.839 --> 00:33:56.240 in my part. But I did want to focus in 459 00:33:56.279 --> 00:33:59.200 on Charles Finny because Charles Finny is a very instrumental 460 00:33:59.279 --> 00:34:05.160 character and socond great Awakening. He we we could we 461 00:34:05.200 --> 00:34:10.119 could quote him saying a number of interesting, influential, important 462 00:34:10.199 --> 00:34:16.760 things that that characterize some of these even evangelists doing 463 00:34:16.760 --> 00:34:19.719 the tent meetings during this time. He is very famous 464 00:34:19.719 --> 00:34:23.599 for tent meetings. If we look at his quotes that 465 00:34:23.679 --> 00:34:28.159 I selected here, Phiney said, the Gospel has been made 466 00:34:28.199 --> 00:34:33.079 of no effect by the traditions of man. Now, I 467 00:34:33.119 --> 00:34:36.440 think that this is an exceptional quote and a and 468 00:34:36.519 --> 00:34:42.239 a very revealing sort of statement about the second grade 469 00:34:42.239 --> 00:34:45.880 Awakening and something of the spirit of it. This is 470 00:34:45.920 --> 00:34:50.119 an anti traditional sort of movement. This is going away 471 00:34:50.360 --> 00:34:58.760 from the organized denominations, the Protestant denominations. I don't I 472 00:34:58.760 --> 00:35:01.639 don't believe this is going on in the American Catholic 473 00:35:01.679 --> 00:35:06.400 world at all, which which is far far smaller back then. 474 00:35:07.039 --> 00:35:12.800 It's it's practically only Irish immigrants back then. There are 475 00:35:12.800 --> 00:35:17.519 a couple of exceptions arrests. Bronson is a is an 476 00:35:17.559 --> 00:35:21.519 Anglo convert to Catholicism way back then. Very interesting character. 477 00:35:23.440 --> 00:35:25.239 But Charles Finny when he when he talks about the 478 00:35:25.280 --> 00:35:30.280 traditions of Man, he he lambasted Roman Catholicism. But he's 479 00:35:30.320 --> 00:35:34.840 not speaking to Roman Catholics in this sermon. He's talking 480 00:35:34.880 --> 00:35:40.599 to a Protestant audience overwhelmingly Protestant, and he is dumping 481 00:35:40.840 --> 00:35:46.320 on the Protestant churches. So what happens in these these 482 00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:51.239 tent meetings, uh, these these cant meetings, these revivals, is 483 00:35:51.639 --> 00:35:55.000 people like Finny go around and say you need to 484 00:35:55.039 --> 00:36:02.079 have an intense experience, an individualized experience of religion, and 485 00:36:02.440 --> 00:36:08.480 you should be suspicious of what the established clergy and 486 00:36:08.599 --> 00:36:12.239 the Sunday schools and churches around here have taught you 487 00:36:12.519 --> 00:36:15.360 what religion is and what it means to be a 488 00:36:16.320 --> 00:36:22.199 confessing of you know, disciplined Christian in this community. And this, 489 00:36:22.440 --> 00:36:30.239 and this leaves his converts with an interesting perspective. The 490 00:36:30.280 --> 00:36:38.400 evangelist always moves on. The evangelist leaves his his disciples 491 00:36:38.760 --> 00:36:43.119 behind as it were, you know, and they frequently form 492 00:36:43.480 --> 00:36:48.599 new congregations. But these things don't always work out there. 493 00:36:48.760 --> 00:36:51.719 There are an awful lot of disillusioned people after this 494 00:36:52.920 --> 00:36:55.440 who fall out of church membership, fall out of church 495 00:36:55.480 --> 00:37:01.760 attendance entirely. And we're going to revisit this phenomenon later 496 00:37:02.039 --> 00:37:05.480 because there's an important character that we visit that that 497 00:37:05.599 --> 00:37:09.880 talks about this directly. Another thing, Finny says, God has 498 00:37:09.880 --> 00:37:13.119 found it necessary to take advantage of the excitability there 499 00:37:13.159 --> 00:37:18.039 is in mankind to produce powerful excitements among them before 500 00:37:18.159 --> 00:37:22.719 he can lead them to obey. Now this corresponds to 501 00:37:23.239 --> 00:37:26.760 what I had said about Finny previously when I mistakenly 502 00:37:26.840 --> 00:37:37.360 called him Spurgeon. When Finny justified creating emotional outbursts in 503 00:37:37.559 --> 00:37:42.559 his in his congregants in order to get them to 504 00:37:42.760 --> 00:37:48.239 make an emotional commitment at the altar call, and he 505 00:37:48.639 --> 00:37:55.960 discounts you a reasoned decision in favor of the emotional moment. 506 00:37:58.800 --> 00:38:00.559 There's a certain sense in which he kind of the 507 00:38:02.400 --> 00:38:05.599 like a Protestant Edward Burne's, you know, a little bit 508 00:38:05.679 --> 00:38:08.360 less of like obviously much less cynical, you know, but 509 00:38:08.400 --> 00:38:09.920 in kind of the same way that it was a 510 00:38:10.599 --> 00:38:13.960 It was like an escalation in arms almost. You know 511 00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:16.199 that unless you could you could match it, you were 512 00:38:16.280 --> 00:38:21.199 kind of out compete it to a certain degree. Indeed, 513 00:38:21.519 --> 00:38:24.360 now I want to be I want to be quite clear, 514 00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:29.039 I'm very hesitant to call any of these people cynical. 515 00:38:30.760 --> 00:38:36.599 I don't like looking in history and discounting what is 516 00:38:36.719 --> 00:38:40.639 said in what is done as pure cynicism. I think 517 00:38:40.679 --> 00:38:44.519 that I think that may happen far more often these days, 518 00:38:44.559 --> 00:38:47.639 but I'm not I'm not teaching the history of the 519 00:38:47.679 --> 00:38:53.119 twenty twenties. I'm teaching history of a long time back well. 520 00:38:53.239 --> 00:38:55.320 And I think that was completely sincere. 521 00:38:56.119 --> 00:39:00.000 I said he was less less cynical than Burnet. Absolute, 522 00:39:00.360 --> 00:39:05.400 I think particlear but absolutely. 523 00:39:06.440 --> 00:39:12.239 Yeah. But I think I think Finny was doing emotional manipulation, 524 00:39:13.440 --> 00:39:17.079 and I think that he was manipulating people sincerely believing 525 00:39:17.159 --> 00:39:19.760 he was doing good and saving their souls. 526 00:39:20.800 --> 00:39:25.320 Well, and you've accepted the premise that if you firmly believe, 527 00:39:25.719 --> 00:39:28.000 the people who don't listen to you are going to 528 00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:32.280 be condemned to an eternity of torment. Like given that premise, 529 00:39:32.760 --> 00:39:37.199 emotionally manipulating people is is the lesser of two evils. 530 00:39:37.519 --> 00:39:43.400 You know, right now, I've I've already listed these things out, 531 00:39:43.480 --> 00:39:45.800 but I didn't want to go over them a little bit. 532 00:39:46.679 --> 00:39:51.840 Finny was a progressive of his day. He did things like, uh, 533 00:39:52.519 --> 00:39:57.039 he had women lead prayer in his meetings. This caused 534 00:39:57.159 --> 00:40:01.639 a big controversy in his day. This is this is 535 00:40:01.679 --> 00:40:07.079 obviously against the Christian tradition in in worship and leadership 536 00:40:07.079 --> 00:40:11.760 and church. He gave these very emotional alter calls. This 537 00:40:11.840 --> 00:40:18.960 becomes mainstreamed in in certain uh, certain circles. He popularizes 538 00:40:19.199 --> 00:40:28.159 praise choruses. I read about Dwight L. Moody, a Chicago 539 00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:32.760 evangelist who was a contemporary and disciple of Finny, and 540 00:40:33.039 --> 00:40:37.920 Moody does a lot to mainstream that practice as well. 541 00:40:38.519 --> 00:40:41.800 Now what's interesting about that is is those old praise 542 00:40:41.880 --> 00:40:46.079 choruses from Finney's day are like the classic old hymns 543 00:40:46.400 --> 00:40:52.599 in some churches, like Fanny Crosby eventually contributes to that tradition. 544 00:40:53.159 --> 00:40:58.679 She's not connected with Finny, but Amazing Grace is an 545 00:40:58.719 --> 00:41:04.199 example of that tradition. And you'll notice that many of 546 00:41:04.400 --> 00:41:06.760 many of the hymns in that style, done in that 547 00:41:06.840 --> 00:41:13.000 style are individualized in focus. They're they're talking about the 548 00:41:13.039 --> 00:41:19.760 grace that saved a wretch like me. It's about me. Now, 549 00:41:19.800 --> 00:41:23.800 that's interesting because the church music that Finny is reacting 550 00:41:23.840 --> 00:41:33.280 against is more holistic. The older hymns of the established 551 00:41:33.280 --> 00:41:38.639 congregations of his day are singing about an event in 552 00:41:38.679 --> 00:41:42.199 the life of Christ, or they're singing about what baptism 553 00:41:42.320 --> 00:41:45.800 does or something like that. It is it's a more 554 00:41:45.880 --> 00:41:49.000 universal thing. It's not a not an individual focus thing. 555 00:41:49.800 --> 00:41:54.719 And I've always thought that that is a very important thing. Nevertheless, 556 00:41:54.960 --> 00:41:56.960 when when we look back at the second grade Awakening, 557 00:41:57.000 --> 00:42:02.039 it's far enough away that it's it's outside of the 558 00:42:02.840 --> 00:42:06.320 thinking of a lot of people who think of themselves 559 00:42:06.320 --> 00:42:11.280 as traditional believers. That's that's too far in the past 560 00:42:11.400 --> 00:42:14.239 for them to realize that this is the origin of 561 00:42:14.280 --> 00:42:21.039 some of these practices. Another important aspect which has a 562 00:42:21.199 --> 00:42:24.440 huge influence in the second great awakening is the social 563 00:42:24.519 --> 00:42:30.159 reforms that Finny brings into the pulpit and proclaims with 564 00:42:30.599 --> 00:42:36.840 his evangel while he's while he is teaching the gospel, 565 00:42:37.239 --> 00:42:43.199 he is also teaching for radical abolitionism, the immediate emancipation 566 00:42:43.519 --> 00:42:49.360 of the slaves in the United States, and other causes 567 00:42:49.400 --> 00:42:54.840 that we will we will see some have have Some 568 00:42:54.960 --> 00:42:58.880 have explained these things as a form of Christian socialism, 569 00:42:58.960 --> 00:43:07.280 so called Christian socialism. Finny goes off to Ohio. He's 570 00:43:07.480 --> 00:43:10.639 from New York. He spends most of his career in 571 00:43:11.320 --> 00:43:16.400 upstate New York, but he does go west into Ohio 572 00:43:17.119 --> 00:43:23.800 to found Oberlin College. If you advance the slide, we'll see, 573 00:43:24.679 --> 00:43:26.400 all right, just give me a second. Again, it's a 574 00:43:26.440 --> 00:43:34.559 little clunky, but so Oberlin College starts out as a 575 00:43:34.760 --> 00:43:44.199 revivalist minister's school of higher education for social reform and humanism. 576 00:43:44.559 --> 00:43:48.320 So this is a you could say it's it's evangelical 577 00:43:48.440 --> 00:43:52.920 in the sense that it's founded by evangelists, but in 578 00:43:53.760 --> 00:44:00.119 the context of annabellam America, this is a very progressive institution. 579 00:44:00.679 --> 00:44:06.000 From its start, Oberlin College is one of the first 580 00:44:06.039 --> 00:44:11.360 schools in the United States to have co ed students. 581 00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:16.960 To admit both male and female students, and it is 582 00:44:17.039 --> 00:44:20.840 one of the very first to have a racially integrated 583 00:44:21.199 --> 00:44:25.039 student body, so well before the Civil War. They're taking 584 00:44:25.360 --> 00:44:31.000 black students at Oberlin College, and this is something that 585 00:44:31.960 --> 00:44:37.639 not surprisingly Oberlin is extremely proud of these days. But 586 00:44:38.159 --> 00:44:41.960 true to their origin, Oberlin is known as one of 587 00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:46.000 the one of the liberal arts schools that are on 588 00:44:46.119 --> 00:44:54.599 the extreme left of things. Oberlin College was founded in 589 00:44:54.800 --> 00:45:00.960 part to spread abolitionist ideas, and Charles Finn is part 590 00:45:01.000 --> 00:45:07.079 of this. He says that these ideas are essential for 591 00:45:07.480 --> 00:45:10.000 the work of the Gospel to take place on earth. 592 00:45:10.639 --> 00:45:15.280 So if we don't have these social reforms popularized, then 593 00:45:15.360 --> 00:45:21.719 people are not living the Christian life. Now, I'm on 594 00:45:21.760 --> 00:45:25.599 your show, so I can say things here that I 595 00:45:25.599 --> 00:45:29.960 wouldn't necessarily say elsewhere, like in my class, for instance, 596 00:45:31.800 --> 00:45:35.840 this is not something that my students could handle very well. 597 00:45:36.119 --> 00:45:44.119 But the notion that radical abolitionism is absolutely necessary for 598 00:45:44.199 --> 00:45:49.880 one to be a Christian is a pernicious and new notion. 599 00:45:52.760 --> 00:45:57.199 The Bible is full of holy men who owned slaves, 600 00:45:58.679 --> 00:46:03.119 and this is this inclin inclutes the New Testament. We 601 00:46:03.199 --> 00:46:06.800 have the Book of Fileheman for instance where the apostle 602 00:46:07.880 --> 00:46:12.719 sends a runaway slave back to his owner and writes 603 00:46:12.760 --> 00:46:18.320 an epistle about the action. The Book of Filehemon does 604 00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:24.199 not instruct the man that owns Onisimus the slave to 605 00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:28.159 set the man free, even though both of them are Christians. 606 00:46:30.519 --> 00:46:34.920 It's merely explaining the circumstances, and the apostle Paul is 607 00:46:34.960 --> 00:46:43.280 sending the slave back to his master. This this sort 608 00:46:43.320 --> 00:46:46.960 of thing strikes modern Americans in a very strange way, 609 00:46:48.320 --> 00:46:52.159 but perhaps they're even more alarmed by the injunctions we 610 00:46:52.280 --> 00:46:56.760 see in several books in the New Testament. In two Peter, 611 00:46:57.599 --> 00:47:03.960 the apostle says, slaves, obey your masters, even the mean ones, 612 00:47:04.079 --> 00:47:08.719 even the froward ones, even the ones that aren't treating 613 00:47:08.719 --> 00:47:12.719 you well. And this is an injunction that comes right 614 00:47:12.760 --> 00:47:17.440 alongside children oby your parents, and wives obey your husbands, 615 00:47:19.159 --> 00:47:25.599 all three of which are hierarchical relationships. The Bible does 616 00:47:25.639 --> 00:47:31.119 not destroy those hierarchical relationships. The Bible teaches doctrines to 617 00:47:31.320 --> 00:47:37.800 reinforce those relationships. So this idea that Christians must be 618 00:47:37.960 --> 00:47:43.800 radical abolitionists, it's important, at least in the historical context here, 619 00:47:45.559 --> 00:47:47.920 this is not something that Christians have ever taught before, 620 00:47:50.239 --> 00:47:51.880 and I think I can just leave it at that. 621 00:47:52.360 --> 00:47:56.320 It's a novel new doctrine. Right. 622 00:47:56.519 --> 00:48:01.719 That's interesting because you and I had a conversation, you know, 623 00:48:01.760 --> 00:48:05.920 off air, just on the phone. And I'm not trying 624 00:48:05.920 --> 00:48:08.760 to turn this into a massive, you know, tangent, but 625 00:48:08.840 --> 00:48:13.360 it's about, I guess, the kind of a new saint 626 00:48:13.679 --> 00:48:18.760 in Christian circles of MLK, right, the idea that he 627 00:48:18.920 --> 00:48:21.719 is kind of this pre eminent example of what it 628 00:48:21.760 --> 00:48:24.199 is to be a Christian. You know, there's this kind 629 00:48:24.239 --> 00:48:29.320 of like syncratic gospel of you know, anti racist Christianity. Right, 630 00:48:30.199 --> 00:48:33.000 And you can have your own opinions on slavery, you know, 631 00:48:33.199 --> 00:48:37.679 you may or may not like it, but at the 632 00:48:37.880 --> 00:48:42.800 very least, like the widest I guess reading you can 633 00:48:42.840 --> 00:48:48.360 take is that the Bible is neutral on slavery, you know, right, 634 00:48:48.400 --> 00:48:52.559 And it's especially aggravating, you know, from a Protestant perspective, 635 00:48:52.599 --> 00:48:55.039 where this there is this doctrine of sola scripture, right, 636 00:48:55.119 --> 00:48:57.639 like only scripture, only scripture, just like going back to 637 00:48:57.679 --> 00:49:00.239 that and going back to that, but except on this 638 00:49:00.280 --> 00:49:03.920 one thing, you know. And so again I'm not trying 639 00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:05.719 to turn this into a tangent. But that's an interesting 640 00:49:05.760 --> 00:49:08.000 point and not something I'd considered so explicitly. 641 00:49:09.840 --> 00:49:16.000 Indeed, Well, it obviously, the institution of slavery has just 642 00:49:16.159 --> 00:49:22.719 caused endless problems for Americans just generally, and many many 643 00:49:22.760 --> 00:49:30.280 of our modern conflicts and agonizing attitudes sim back to 644 00:49:30.320 --> 00:49:33.920 our inability to deal with that problem and digest it 645 00:49:34.000 --> 00:49:39.280 and set it to rest, and that's very unfortunate for us. 646 00:49:40.119 --> 00:49:43.599 Well, it really is kind of like the the crack 647 00:49:43.719 --> 00:49:47.880 that runs through our society, you know, I mean, I mean, 648 00:49:48.920 --> 00:49:51.039 maybe at one point in time there could have been 649 00:49:51.079 --> 00:49:54.320 a peaceful resolution to that, but at this point, it 650 00:49:54.400 --> 00:49:58.639 just seems like there's too many people invested in eager 651 00:49:58.760 --> 00:50:04.360 and keeping that indeed, in that divide open and raw 652 00:50:04.719 --> 00:50:06.400 and kind of poking at that wound. 653 00:50:07.679 --> 00:50:10.199 There. There is obviously a lot of political hay to 654 00:50:10.199 --> 00:50:11.719 be made of it. There's a lot of money to 655 00:50:11.719 --> 00:50:18.320 be made of it, but we will go on. I 656 00:50:19.119 --> 00:50:23.239 think that it is very notable that I think it's 657 00:50:23.519 --> 00:50:28.079 the United States and Haiti are the only two countries 658 00:50:28.360 --> 00:50:33.159 that abolished the institution of slavery by violence and with 659 00:50:33.199 --> 00:50:36.519 no political plan for what happened afterwards. Of course, these 660 00:50:36.599 --> 00:50:40.320 these countries are very different from each other. In Haiti, 661 00:50:40.440 --> 00:50:43.280 there was there was kind of a wholesale slaughter that 662 00:50:43.360 --> 00:50:47.280 followed that that did not follow in the United States. 663 00:50:47.360 --> 00:50:51.599 Our slaughter was just armies of regions fighting and killing 664 00:50:51.599 --> 00:50:56.800 one another by the hundreds of thousands. But we will 665 00:50:56.840 --> 00:51:01.599 move on to more detail. Also about the second grade Awakening, 666 00:51:02.039 --> 00:51:05.519 I haven't gotten to the fun part yet, and we 667 00:51:05.599 --> 00:51:08.519 will skip along until we get to that. In the 668 00:51:08.559 --> 00:51:13.159 Second Grade Awakening, we see many examples of what early 669 00:51:13.280 --> 00:51:19.159 Christians called chileasm. We could use an English word for 670 00:51:19.199 --> 00:51:27.519 it and call it millennialism. Millennialism is utopian religion, religious 671 00:51:27.519 --> 00:51:34.519 belief that expects some kind of earthly expression of an 672 00:51:34.559 --> 00:51:40.920 ideal world. Now, this is in contrast to the kind 673 00:51:41.000 --> 00:51:46.519 of traditional religious expression that people like Charles Finny. Not 674 00:51:47.000 --> 00:51:49.719 to dump too hard on Charles Finny, I want to 675 00:51:49.719 --> 00:51:52.920 give the man his due, But people like Charles Finny 676 00:51:53.039 --> 00:51:59.800 were contrasting their evangel with Charles Finny did not like 677 00:52:00.239 --> 00:52:08.239 the modest position of traditional faith. Traditional religious belief believe 678 00:52:09.039 --> 00:52:12.880 it's a belief that salvation is a kind of mystery, 679 00:52:14.719 --> 00:52:19.280 and that is something that is accomplished ultimately by God, 680 00:52:19.880 --> 00:52:26.320 not by man. It is divine grace that works out 681 00:52:26.480 --> 00:52:32.000 the salvation of humanity. Human beings need to cooperate with 682 00:52:32.199 --> 00:52:36.800 this in some form or another. But this is a 683 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:40.199 profound mystery that we also see in the Gospel. Christ 684 00:52:40.360 --> 00:52:46.039 says his kingdom is not of this world. Millennialism denies 685 00:52:46.400 --> 00:52:51.679 that statement of Christ and expects to see the Kingdom 686 00:52:51.719 --> 00:52:58.039 of God established on earth by man. Now they might say, oh, 687 00:52:58.079 --> 00:53:01.719 it's God working through them, but they expect to see 688 00:53:01.880 --> 00:53:06.760 evil purged from the world, or evil purge from their 689 00:53:06.880 --> 00:53:13.119 special community. Now this is an American tradition. Both the 690 00:53:13.199 --> 00:53:18.480 Quakers and Puritans in the North, as David Hackett Fisher 691 00:53:18.519 --> 00:53:23.840 points out, did expect to set up kinds of utopian communities. 692 00:53:24.639 --> 00:53:31.199 You may recall from early American history communes and communal 693 00:53:31.599 --> 00:53:39.519 experiments abolishing property and such were done in the South 694 00:53:39.599 --> 00:53:44.039 as well. Now, these things always failed very quickly, but 695 00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:48.000 the Colony of Georgia was set up as a utopian commune. 696 00:53:48.679 --> 00:53:54.079 Jamestown was originally a communist experiment with a master plan. 697 00:53:54.679 --> 00:53:58.760 But these things fizzled out very quickly because the incentives 698 00:53:58.800 --> 00:54:01.719 weren't right, the people were were not able to survive. 699 00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.039 So if we advance on to the next slide, we 700 00:54:08.760 --> 00:54:13.840 will will see some millennialism at work. Oh, here we go. 701 00:54:18.519 --> 00:54:20.000 Is this what you wanted? Or should I go to 702 00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:22.679 the next Yes? I actually didn't expect the rest of 703 00:54:22.679 --> 00:54:27.519 those notes. There just my fault. I've already said. New 704 00:54:27.519 --> 00:54:32.960 England began with this theological notion that the right belief 705 00:54:33.000 --> 00:54:41.639 could build the perfect society. So maybe the least interesting 706 00:54:41.679 --> 00:54:43.760 movement to come out of this, at least I find 707 00:54:43.760 --> 00:54:48.119 it to be the least interesting. Or the Unitarians, who 708 00:54:49.119 --> 00:54:53.840 in more recent times merged with the Universalists and became 709 00:54:54.440 --> 00:55:01.280 known as you you, the Unitarian Universalists. Now these are interesting, 710 00:55:02.719 --> 00:55:07.000 I suppose, and that they made the talking points of 711 00:55:07.039 --> 00:55:12.719 the Democratic Party their statement of faith. And if you 712 00:55:12.719 --> 00:55:16.239 want to know what Unitarians believe, you don't have to 713 00:55:16.320 --> 00:55:19.639 look very far. They like to post it on the 714 00:55:19.639 --> 00:55:22.400 fronts of their churches. They do not believe in any 715 00:55:22.480 --> 00:55:28.400 Christian creeds, unlike their Puritan forefathers. They don't believe that 716 00:55:28.519 --> 00:55:30.760 Christ was God. They don't believe he was born of 717 00:55:30.840 --> 00:55:33.960 a virgin. They don't believe that he died or rose 718 00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:38.519 again or ascended into heaven. They don't believe the Bible 719 00:55:38.599 --> 00:55:42.639 is the word of God. And you wonder why they 720 00:55:42.719 --> 00:55:45.079 might use a cross as a symbol at all. They 721 00:55:45.199 --> 00:55:47.800 kind of get they kind of moved away from a 722 00:55:47.840 --> 00:55:52.920 traditional presentation of a Christian cross and started using stylized 723 00:55:53.480 --> 00:55:59.880 monad or something. If you advanced the slide one more, 724 00:56:00.079 --> 00:56:03.519 or it's a good, good place for us to rest, 725 00:56:04.199 --> 00:56:10.079 here we go. I haven't seen one that says. 726 00:56:09.880 --> 00:56:12.639 All genders are whole, holy and good. I mean, I 727 00:56:12.880 --> 00:56:14.519 understand the meaning of it, but that's a new one 728 00:56:14.559 --> 00:56:20.199 even for me. Yeah, I get the feeling they change 729 00:56:20.239 --> 00:56:29.119 this pretty frequently versions of it myself, but the the. 730 00:56:28.880 --> 00:56:32.119 Marching orders are always changing on that front, I suppose. 731 00:56:33.440 --> 00:56:35.559 I'm also confused, like what's the point of even going 732 00:56:35.639 --> 00:56:39.519 to church? You know, like you're effectively just a social club. 733 00:56:39.760 --> 00:56:45.440 But that's probably not a no I really productive. I 734 00:56:45.480 --> 00:56:50.840 looked at a Unitarian I guess a prayer book of 735 00:56:50.880 --> 00:56:53.639 some sort that they had some kind of pew book 736 00:56:54.119 --> 00:56:56.880 at a Unitarian church, and I flipped through it just 737 00:56:56.960 --> 00:57:01.159 because I was curious, and I noticed prayer by Ralph 738 00:57:01.239 --> 00:57:07.079 Waldo Imberson. Oh, that's interesting, that said in church. And 739 00:57:07.119 --> 00:57:13.000 that's really interesting because the Transcendentalist movement of the American 740 00:57:13.320 --> 00:57:17.239 Humanists and things like that, that that is an American 741 00:57:17.360 --> 00:57:22.440 literary tradition, and there's there's something of style in that 742 00:57:22.480 --> 00:57:25.920 body of literature. But they they put it in a 743 00:57:26.000 --> 00:57:30.599 church pew and called it their faith, and I suppose 744 00:57:30.639 --> 00:57:32.880 it is a faith. This is this is a very 745 00:57:33.199 --> 00:57:39.440 politicized religion, such as it is. It's it was never 746 00:57:39.639 --> 00:57:44.119 very popular, though it does have a lot of important adherents. 747 00:57:45.639 --> 00:57:49.880 I'm sorry to admit that John Adams was a Unitarian. 748 00:57:50.000 --> 00:57:53.480 I rather like John Adams President, John Adams of Massachusetts, 749 00:57:54.559 --> 00:57:59.880 John Quincy Adams, and surprisingly John Z. Calhoun of South Carolina. 750 00:58:00.960 --> 00:58:05.840 Oh that's incredibly surprising. Yeah, so there's there's kind of 751 00:58:05.840 --> 00:58:09.960 a diversity there. You know, you have some famous Southerners 752 00:58:09.960 --> 00:58:13.119 who are also Unitarians. But this was something that never 753 00:58:13.159 --> 00:58:16.800 got very far from the elites. So it looks to 754 00:58:16.800 --> 00:58:20.400 me like like a religion of the political class, the 755 00:58:20.679 --> 00:58:27.559 political elites. I knew some people who became Unitarian, and 756 00:58:28.079 --> 00:58:31.920 they definitely wanted to think of themselves as upper crust 757 00:58:32.400 --> 00:58:38.400 yet still religious, not believing any unpopular religious things to believe, 758 00:58:38.480 --> 00:58:44.679 only believing the most popular sorts of doctrines. That's one 759 00:58:44.719 --> 00:58:46.079 way of looking at it. 760 00:58:46.320 --> 00:58:49.639 In my personal experience. They seem to be kind of 761 00:58:49.679 --> 00:58:52.960 striver types, you know, the kind of people who want 762 00:58:53.000 --> 00:58:55.719 to be as high status as possible, and it seems 763 00:58:55.760 --> 00:58:57.960 to be a convenient way to attach themselves to all 764 00:58:58.039 --> 00:58:59.480 high status beliefs at once. 765 00:59:01.000 --> 00:59:04.480 Yeah. Yeah, you win points everywhere by saying those slogans. 766 00:59:06.559 --> 00:59:08.039 Should I go to the next month? You don't get 767 00:59:08.039 --> 00:59:11.199 attacked for saying any of those things, right, Yes, of course, 768 00:59:11.880 --> 00:59:17.199 it's almost say I am with power. I I agree 769 00:59:17.280 --> 00:59:24.599 with power. So if you advance, we'll go on to 770 00:59:24.679 --> 00:59:30.519 something more interesting. Okay, so the second grade awakening. I 771 00:59:30.519 --> 00:59:33.599 I've looked for a more clear version of this map. 772 00:59:33.679 --> 00:59:36.559 I apologize this map is kind of blurry, but it's 773 00:59:36.679 --> 00:59:39.840 it's the best map of this sort that I have. 774 00:59:41.719 --> 00:59:45.000 You can see this, uh, this teal area, this blue 775 00:59:45.039 --> 00:59:50.239 green area. This is where most of this evangelist activity 776 00:59:50.320 --> 00:59:53.119 is going on. I have I have said before there 777 00:59:53.119 --> 00:59:55.639 are evangelists in the South, but they do seem to 778 00:59:55.639 --> 00:59:58.639 be doing something distinctly different just at the same time. 779 01:00:01.599 --> 01:00:04.679 In this in this region of the north where where 780 01:00:04.719 --> 01:00:06.880 most of this activity is taking place, most of the 781 01:00:06.920 --> 01:00:11.239 revival meetings are taking place, you see a bunch of 782 01:00:11.760 --> 01:00:20.199 special movements groups springing up. You see Shaker communes here 783 01:00:20.239 --> 01:00:26.320 on the map, you see a few. You see a 784 01:00:26.360 --> 01:00:32.119 few of these red boxes. The red represents Mormon activity 785 01:00:32.559 --> 01:00:38.880 and Mormon communities. The red lines also also illustrate the 786 01:00:38.920 --> 01:00:43.599 movement of the Mormons westward. Of course, they eventually end 787 01:00:43.679 --> 01:00:49.360 up in Utah, where most of them do. Also, we 788 01:00:49.440 --> 01:00:53.480 see other things illustrated on this map. There there are 789 01:00:53.719 --> 01:01:01.639 some famous communes like Brook Farm in Massachusetts. Nathaniel Hawthorne 790 01:01:01.920 --> 01:01:07.880 was part of that experiment that was a vegetarian commune 791 01:01:08.480 --> 01:01:13.719 that tried to eliminate private property. Another thing that you 792 01:01:13.760 --> 01:01:20.159 see marked on the map is the Foyerist phalanxes. This 793 01:01:20.199 --> 01:01:27.440 is after this is all establishments of a French utopian 794 01:01:27.639 --> 01:01:33.840 thinker named Fourier. And he was not a religious thinker, 795 01:01:33.880 --> 01:01:37.000 but he was something. He was a Communist thinker. Now 796 01:01:37.039 --> 01:01:42.840 this is before Karl Marx, which is important. He prefigures 797 01:01:44.000 --> 01:01:47.320 the Communists of eighteen forty eight and the Communist Manifesto. 798 01:01:49.239 --> 01:01:51.719 And he was not a religious thinker, but he imagined 799 01:01:51.719 --> 01:01:56.000 that he could solve all the world's problems through applied 800 01:01:56.360 --> 01:02:03.840 reason and scientific thinking. He said there was no problem 801 01:02:03.920 --> 01:02:07.920 that human beings could experience that could not be reasoned 802 01:02:07.960 --> 01:02:12.239 to a solution. So he's a thoroughgoing rationalist, and he 803 01:02:12.320 --> 01:02:16.400 imagined that in the future humanity would live in gigantic 804 01:02:16.599 --> 01:02:22.360 communal apartment buildings. It's a very curious thing. He was 805 01:02:22.480 --> 01:02:26.559 a prolific writer, and he had adherents here in the 806 01:02:26.639 --> 01:02:32.760 United States who were very motivated by the utopian millennialist 807 01:02:34.360 --> 01:02:38.519 spirit of the age and started selling all all that 808 01:02:38.599 --> 01:02:45.239 they had to buy spots in these experimental fall lengths settlements, 809 01:02:46.000 --> 01:02:49.280 and several of them actually built buildings and such some 810 01:02:49.320 --> 01:02:54.880 of them, some of them still exist. I understand if 811 01:02:54.880 --> 01:03:01.920 you ad advance, will continue. So another one of these 812 01:03:03.360 --> 01:03:07.639 utopian groups that try to get rid of all their 813 01:03:07.760 --> 01:03:15.800 religious ideas and focus on humanist, rationalist approaches to perfect 814 01:03:15.840 --> 01:03:20.039 peace and harmony and the end of evil were the 815 01:03:20.079 --> 01:03:28.880 followers of Robert Owen. Now this is peculiar and interesting. 816 01:03:29.039 --> 01:03:33.440 We see this as an Anglo American phenomenon. The Second 817 01:03:33.480 --> 01:03:39.960 Great Awakening does have its adherents over in England as well. 818 01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:43.519 But they find that they can get they can get 819 01:03:43.519 --> 01:03:47.920 financial support, and they can get people to go in 820 01:03:48.159 --> 01:03:53.800 with them in communal experiments and communes. Here in the 821 01:03:53.920 --> 01:03:59.159 United States. Whereas back in England these ideas are not 822 01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:03.639 so popular. In the United States, there are always wealthy 823 01:04:03.760 --> 01:04:06.719 New Englanders who are willing to finance things like this, 824 01:04:06.960 --> 01:04:15.480 these these utopian experiments. So Robert Owen, who is from 825 01:04:15.800 --> 01:04:18.960 I want to say, I want to say, he's from Wales. 826 01:04:21.280 --> 01:04:24.960 I don't think he's from England. I think he's from Wales. 827 01:04:26.199 --> 01:04:30.960 But he's from He's from the British Empire. He's from 828 01:04:30.960 --> 01:04:34.440 Great Britain. He comes to Indiana and he starts a 829 01:04:34.519 --> 01:04:37.800 commune there. Now, this has a lot in common with 830 01:04:38.119 --> 01:04:43.000 the the Foaeis Phalanxes that that I just talked about. 831 01:04:43.880 --> 01:04:46.400 Robert Owen imagined that everyone would live in a giant 832 01:04:46.440 --> 01:04:51.440 apartment building. There would be no there would be no religion. 833 01:04:52.679 --> 01:04:55.880 It would be totally peaceful, there would be no crime, 834 01:04:56.760 --> 01:05:01.079 and everyone's lives would be planned so there would be 835 01:05:01.079 --> 01:05:06.159 no conflict. We see this kind of thing done again 836 01:05:06.199 --> 01:05:11.079 and again during this period. But Owen wanted to eliminate 837 01:05:11.679 --> 01:05:18.000 all religious education, which is a very important aspect, and 838 01:05:18.079 --> 01:05:23.920 he blamed this on the failure of his commune. If 839 01:05:23.920 --> 01:05:27.559 you advance the slide one click, we'll see a picture 840 01:05:27.599 --> 01:05:34.000 of Robert Owen. There we go. Yes, he was from Wales. 841 01:05:34.320 --> 01:05:39.840 I remembered it right, Okay, So Robert Owen he believed 842 01:05:39.880 --> 01:05:43.800 that the Christian teaching of the sinfulness of man and 843 01:05:43.800 --> 01:05:49.199 the fall of man was actually the source of human misbehavior, 844 01:05:50.239 --> 01:05:54.960 and he was. Though he failed as a utopian, he 845 01:05:55.039 --> 01:06:03.880 became a pioneer in public education. And I I know, 846 01:06:04.079 --> 01:06:09.159 I know critics of Marxism have cited Robert Owen as 847 01:06:09.199 --> 01:06:14.199 an inspiration to Karl Marx and his advocacy of public education. 848 01:06:15.119 --> 01:06:18.519 I don't know that Marx himself ever cited Robert Owen 849 01:06:18.639 --> 01:06:23.320 for that, but it's but it is. It's a coincidence anyway, 850 01:06:23.320 --> 01:06:26.960 both Marx and Robert Owen both both said that there 851 01:06:27.000 --> 01:06:35.000 should be universal public education. Shall I go to the 852 01:06:35.039 --> 01:06:42.400 next slide? Yes, go right ahead. So the Nashoba community 853 01:06:43.000 --> 01:06:49.280 is another small phenomenon. It did not take off, but 854 01:06:49.559 --> 01:06:55.800 it's it's another instance of an Anglo a Scottish woman 855 01:06:55.840 --> 01:06:58.559 in this case, who came to the United States found 856 01:06:58.599 --> 01:07:02.639 funding with a Meremerican elites who were willing to fund 857 01:07:03.800 --> 01:07:11.840 these utopian experiments. Francis Wright went to Memphis, Tennessee, and 858 01:07:13.039 --> 01:07:18.239 had had a lot of abolitionist goals and had a 859 01:07:18.239 --> 01:07:23.880 lot of abolitionists enthusiasts who are funding this effort. She 860 01:07:24.159 --> 01:07:29.960 went to Memphis, Tennessee. She bought a derelict plantation and 861 01:07:30.119 --> 01:07:36.880 began buying slaves. Now, this is a very strange thing 862 01:07:37.159 --> 01:07:41.000 for a radical abolitionists to do, but she intended to 863 01:07:41.079 --> 01:07:47.440 found a utopian community with her slaves, with the goal 864 01:07:47.800 --> 01:07:53.679 of making enough profit on the plantation to send them 865 01:07:53.719 --> 01:08:00.920 to African colonies. Now this is a gradualist approach. This 866 01:08:01.000 --> 01:08:05.000 is not a radical abolitionist approach. It's a gradualist approach. 867 01:08:05.639 --> 01:08:09.280 What's radical is the other things that Francis Right attempted 868 01:08:09.320 --> 01:08:13.960 to do with this experiment. Like Robert Owen, Francis Wright 869 01:08:14.039 --> 01:08:19.119 was also a radical atheist, so she attempted to get 870 01:08:19.279 --> 01:08:25.000 the slaves to stop practicing religion, to stop believing in Jesus. So, 871 01:08:25.840 --> 01:08:31.600 these slaves had been in the United States for a 872 01:08:31.640 --> 01:08:37.479 few generations for the most part. There are exceptions we're 873 01:08:37.479 --> 01:08:41.479 talking about this period of history, but most American slaves 874 01:08:41.520 --> 01:08:44.960 were born into slavery. Most American slaves were not brought 875 01:08:45.159 --> 01:08:51.399 to the United States. The number of slaves born in 876 01:08:51.439 --> 01:08:54.439 the United States have vastly outnumbers the number of slaves 877 01:08:54.479 --> 01:08:59.239 that were brought to the United States in slave transportation 878 01:08:59.800 --> 01:09:04.960 in the Middle Passage in the Atlantic, but Francis Wright 879 01:09:04.960 --> 01:09:08.720 she attempted to de christianize them. This did not go 880 01:09:08.760 --> 01:09:12.239 overwell and it did not seem to take At least 881 01:09:12.319 --> 01:09:15.760 Francis Wright did not think her efforts made much impact. 882 01:09:16.800 --> 01:09:20.760 Another thing that she did was she preached something that 883 01:09:20.800 --> 01:09:25.399 she became very infamous for on the lecture circuit. She 884 01:09:25.560 --> 01:09:31.800 preached free love to her slaves. She attempted to abolish marriage. 885 01:09:31.880 --> 01:09:36.319 Now evidently she had more success along these lines, but 886 01:09:36.880 --> 01:09:43.039 her success destroyed whatever organization she had at this experiment. 887 01:09:44.760 --> 01:09:50.079 The slaves all began fighting amongst themselves, and order in 888 01:09:50.199 --> 01:09:56.279 cohesion totally broke down at the Nashova experiment and the 889 01:09:56.279 --> 01:09:58.920 whole thing had to be dissolved. She ended up having 890 01:09:58.960 --> 01:10:04.000 to sell the slaves again, which was traumatic I think 891 01:10:04.039 --> 01:10:07.800 for everyone involved, including Francis Right by the way, I 892 01:10:07.840 --> 01:10:11.840 mean she she failed and realized that she became insolvent, 893 01:10:12.319 --> 01:10:15.560 which is why she had to turn to the auctioneer. 894 01:10:18.399 --> 01:10:21.319 If you advance once you'll see a picture of Francis 895 01:10:21.359 --> 01:10:28.520 Wright here. She is. She's lionized by feminists these days, 896 01:10:28.600 --> 01:10:29.600 is what I understand. 897 01:10:30.840 --> 01:10:33.840 It's interesting because I think I've actually seen when when 898 01:10:33.880 --> 01:10:36.399 when that portrait came up. I think I've actually seen 899 01:10:36.640 --> 01:10:41.039 that portrait before in college, so I've at least seen 900 01:10:41.880 --> 01:10:44.399 her probably in that context, you know, as some kind 901 01:10:44.399 --> 01:10:45.479 of like feminist icon. 902 01:10:47.039 --> 01:10:53.199 I actually have a scholarly interest in these things, and 903 01:10:53.279 --> 01:10:56.880 I'm trying to track down sources on these on these things, 904 01:10:57.159 --> 01:10:59.960 and I want to get a book of Francis Wright's 905 01:11:00.239 --> 01:11:03.960 lectures because I've never read them. I'm sure they're on 906 01:11:04.199 --> 01:11:07.000 archive top work or something that I just haven't gone 907 01:11:07.039 --> 01:11:10.279 to find them. Okay, So the next group that we 908 01:11:10.359 --> 01:11:14.560 have is the Shakers. Now this is a very peculiar group. 909 01:11:15.479 --> 01:11:21.079 They started out as a sect of the Quakers. So 910 01:11:21.359 --> 01:11:27.439 the Quakers, you must understand, are much older than all 911 01:11:27.479 --> 01:11:30.840 the other groups that we're talking about here. They do 912 01:11:30.960 --> 01:11:33.560 not date back to the second grade Awakening. They're actually 913 01:11:33.680 --> 01:11:36.600 much older than that. And we have a lot of 914 01:11:36.840 --> 01:11:42.399 illustrious members of this sect. William Penn who founds Pennsylvania 915 01:11:42.800 --> 01:11:48.800 for instance. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is founded by the Quakers. The 916 01:11:48.880 --> 01:11:53.079 Quakers start out as kind of a Pentecostal sort of sect. 917 01:11:53.399 --> 01:11:59.439 They're known to have these really wild religious emotional experiences, 918 01:12:00.079 --> 01:12:04.520 which is why they are called Quakers. They would quake, 919 01:12:05.960 --> 01:12:11.880 their bodies would shake in religious ecstasy, which is why 920 01:12:11.920 --> 01:12:18.760 they earned that name. They called themselves the Society of Friends. Now, 921 01:12:18.880 --> 01:12:22.319 though they started out with this Pentecostal sort of experience, 922 01:12:23.279 --> 01:12:29.920 they became quietest over time. So the Quaker's service did 923 01:12:29.960 --> 01:12:36.359 not involve any leaders. These people denied all social hierarchy, 924 01:12:37.840 --> 01:12:41.039 so there was no leader of the Quakers east in 925 01:12:41.159 --> 01:12:46.119 theory that they had no pastors. In the Quaker meeting, 926 01:12:47.439 --> 01:12:50.840 the men and women would separate, as you see here 927 01:12:50.960 --> 01:12:55.159 in this illustration. They would separate in the Quaker meeting house, 928 01:12:55.159 --> 01:12:56.840 the men on one side, the women on the other, 929 01:12:57.920 --> 01:13:02.399 and they would sit down. There was no order of service. 930 01:13:03.840 --> 01:13:06.800 There were no prayers, there were no creeds. There was 931 01:13:06.840 --> 01:13:13.840 no Bible reading until someone felt motivated to get up 932 01:13:13.880 --> 01:13:17.119 and say something. And sometimes in a meeting and a 933 01:13:17.159 --> 01:13:20.239 Quaker meeting, no one would say anything and eventually everyone 934 01:13:20.279 --> 01:13:26.560 would go home. They had no symbolism, no art. Quakers 935 01:13:26.600 --> 01:13:31.279 do not display the cross, they do not practice baptism, 936 01:13:32.359 --> 01:13:35.680 they do not believe in the Trinity. So Quakers, though 937 01:13:35.680 --> 01:13:40.479 they are older than these groups, we should see immediately 938 01:13:40.560 --> 01:13:47.800 these are very radical, non traditional Christians at best. I 939 01:13:48.600 --> 01:13:51.479 do not think that you could say that anyone who 940 01:13:51.560 --> 01:13:54.920 denies the deity of Christ and the Trinity of God 941 01:13:55.079 --> 01:13:56.920 can be a Christian. 942 01:13:58.479 --> 01:14:01.680 I actually have some experience with current day Quakers, and 943 01:14:01.720 --> 01:14:05.079 it's interesting because they have effectively left behind the concept 944 01:14:05.119 --> 01:14:09.159 of God altogether. They refer to the light, you know, 945 01:14:09.279 --> 01:14:11.880 and when the light leaves you, you know, you can 946 01:14:12.239 --> 01:14:15.479 you can speak in their service, you know. In otherwise 947 01:14:15.520 --> 01:14:18.960 it's just dead, silent the whole time. And it's interesting 948 01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:23.319 because it just so happens that that that God happens 949 01:14:23.359 --> 01:14:26.159 to listen to a lot of NPR, you know, And 950 01:14:26.319 --> 01:14:30.119 so that's that's tend or the light rather and that 951 01:14:30.159 --> 01:14:33.119 tends to be uh what comes up in services. But anyway, 952 01:14:33.359 --> 01:14:34.119 you were saying. 953 01:14:35.560 --> 01:14:39.920 Well, the the Shakers are distinct from the Quakers. The 954 01:14:40.199 --> 01:14:46.840 Quakers find they find shelter in their colony here in 955 01:14:46.880 --> 01:14:51.239 the United States. Everywhere else the Quakers go they meet 956 01:14:51.279 --> 01:14:55.840 with persecution. But this this involves their radical belief against 957 01:14:56.319 --> 01:15:01.920 all hierarchical institutions. So people that convert to Quakerism, disrespect 958 01:15:02.000 --> 01:15:05.359 their parents and get thrown out of their homes, can't 959 01:15:05.399 --> 01:15:11.199 abide with their family members anymore. They attack public officials 960 01:15:11.199 --> 01:15:14.439 and say, you have no right to make rulings on anything, 961 01:15:14.600 --> 01:15:16.960 You have no right to judge anything, you have no 962 01:15:17.079 --> 01:15:20.479 right to make laws on anything, because everyone is equal, 963 01:15:22.560 --> 01:15:27.119 which sounds ought to sound familiar to us. I think 964 01:15:27.159 --> 01:15:32.880 that it was Curtis Jarvin who claims that Quakerism is 965 01:15:33.000 --> 01:15:36.840 the official religion of the United States. And I have 966 01:15:37.079 --> 01:15:40.840 always loved that remark. That has always struck me as 967 01:15:41.520 --> 01:15:45.800 true somehow, because they do just as you say. They 968 01:15:46.119 --> 01:15:51.000 talk about the light that leads every believer to his 969 01:15:51.119 --> 01:15:56.199 own vision of goodness or truth. So it's a very personalized, 970 01:15:56.359 --> 01:16:02.479 individualized sort of experience with Quakers. But all that to say, 971 01:16:03.319 --> 01:16:09.279 the Shakers, they split from the Quakers. The Shakers are 972 01:16:09.319 --> 01:16:14.600 founded by a woman that calls herself Mother Ann Lee. 973 01:16:15.520 --> 01:16:21.359 Now she is another Britisher, like like William Penn. She 974 01:16:21.439 --> 01:16:27.239 comes to America from England, and she's a She is 975 01:16:27.319 --> 01:16:34.920 a curious figure. Evidently she had a very terrible marriage 976 01:16:35.119 --> 01:16:39.199 and was something of a mystic and a strange person, 977 01:16:39.520 --> 01:16:45.239 like a a non traditional sort of woman, r wife 978 01:16:45.399 --> 01:16:50.079 and eventually gets rid of her husband. She separates from 979 01:16:50.079 --> 01:16:58.039 her husband after having several several children that die very early, 980 01:16:58.359 --> 01:17:03.720 so she she experiences pregnancy and birth her children die. 981 01:17:03.880 --> 01:17:08.920 This seems very traumatic for her, and she has visions 982 01:17:09.560 --> 01:17:16.479 and mystical experiences, and she begins teaching in the Quaker 983 01:17:16.520 --> 01:17:20.039 meetinghouse where women are allowed to get up and speak, 984 01:17:21.479 --> 01:17:24.920 where women preach. This is something the Quakers are very 985 01:17:24.920 --> 01:17:29.359 famous for. Us is a very controversial thing, and Mother 986 01:17:29.479 --> 01:17:35.920 Anne Lee proclaims to her followers that Christ has already 987 01:17:36.079 --> 01:17:41.199 come back, that Christ has returned to Earth, that the 988 01:17:41.319 --> 01:17:47.199 Kingdom of Heaven is now and that no one is 989 01:17:47.239 --> 01:17:50.640 to be married anymore, and no one is to own 990 01:17:50.720 --> 01:17:55.000 anything anymore, and that they are going to live a 991 01:17:55.119 --> 01:18:01.520 serene life with no evil. And she also teaches as 992 01:18:01.520 --> 01:18:04.800 opposed to the quietest mode of the Quakers, where they 993 01:18:04.840 --> 01:18:11.359 just sit in silence, she teaches ritual dancing, so the 994 01:18:12.079 --> 01:18:19.279 Shakers people that join this sect are known to dance 995 01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:26.359 ritually together. Now this becomes very popular during the Second 996 01:18:26.399 --> 01:18:30.119 Grade Awakening. Mother ann Lee lives well before the Second 997 01:18:30.119 --> 01:18:35.159 Greade Awakening and dies here in America, but the Shakers 998 01:18:35.199 --> 01:18:39.359 sect only finds an audience during the Second Great Awakening, 999 01:18:39.880 --> 01:18:43.880 and it becomes a popular commune and unlike the other 1000 01:18:44.000 --> 01:18:47.960 communes like the Owenites in the Nashoba community and the 1001 01:18:48.000 --> 01:18:50.720 full lengths that are set up here and there. The 1002 01:18:50.920 --> 01:18:55.840 Shakers actually make a go at this. It seems to 1003 01:18:55.880 --> 01:19:00.760 be a successful experiment, at least to all these people live. 1004 01:19:02.079 --> 01:19:05.359 This is an example of a Shaker village. You may 1005 01:19:05.560 --> 01:19:12.479 have encountered Shaker style furniture that comes from the Shakers. 1006 01:19:12.800 --> 01:19:17.960 They invented that style. Here's a Shaker workshop. You can 1007 01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:22.479 see that they have very minimalist sort of approach, which 1008 01:19:22.640 --> 01:19:27.399 corresponds to their Quaker heritage, which is very minimalist. You 1009 01:19:27.399 --> 01:19:32.960 can see that the chairs on the walls here. These 1010 01:19:33.079 --> 01:19:39.399 communities are now empty because the Shakers all forswore marriage 1011 01:19:39.880 --> 01:19:43.359 to join these communes. They did not marry, they did 1012 01:19:43.359 --> 01:19:48.319 not have children. Their only way to keep their sect 1013 01:19:48.359 --> 01:19:52.680 going was to recruit from the outside, and after a 1014 01:19:52.720 --> 01:19:56.319 certain point no one was interested in joining anymore. They 1015 01:19:56.359 --> 01:20:03.720 basically lived a monastic existence. You can see they did 1016 01:20:03.800 --> 01:20:08.359 have really remarkable craftsmanship and grace in the things that 1017 01:20:08.399 --> 01:20:13.279 they built. Another another funny little point about the Shakers. 1018 01:20:13.680 --> 01:20:17.720 They were the first people to be granted a conscientious 1019 01:20:17.800 --> 01:20:24.439 objector status. When Lincoln was looking for soldiers for his war, 1020 01:20:25.279 --> 01:20:29.039 he did not try recruiting amongst the Quakers who were 1021 01:20:29.079 --> 01:20:34.880 all pacifists, strict pacifists, and refused to fight. And this 1022 01:20:35.000 --> 01:20:39.520 is the origin of the conscientious objector status in the 1023 01:20:39.640 --> 01:20:43.279 United States military. 1024 01:20:44.800 --> 01:20:48.800 This is actually, this is actually my favorite, my favorite 1025 01:20:48.800 --> 01:20:52.000 part of this, of this lecture. And even though it's 1026 01:20:52.039 --> 01:20:54.800 been I guess the best part of a decade. Now 1027 01:20:55.319 --> 01:20:58.760 I remember this community in particular. It's just one that 1028 01:20:58.840 --> 01:21:02.000 always sticks in my brain. But anyway where you introduced them. 1029 01:21:02.880 --> 01:21:07.279 Yes, indeed, this is usually the favorite of my high 1030 01:21:07.279 --> 01:21:13.319 school students. So the Oneida Community was founded in eighteen 1031 01:21:13.399 --> 01:21:18.600 forty eight, coincidentally the year the Communist Manifesto is published, 1032 01:21:18.640 --> 01:21:23.439 eighteen forty eight, such an eventful year. It's founded by 1033 01:21:23.840 --> 01:21:31.720 John Humphrey Noise, who is from Brattleborough, Vermont, so southern Vermont. 1034 01:21:32.359 --> 01:21:39.520 John Humphrey Noise goes to Harvard he Oh, he meets 1035 01:21:39.560 --> 01:21:45.439 William Lloyd Garrison, so his career begins as a radical 1036 01:21:45.560 --> 01:21:52.720 among the radicals. He is a very vocal abolitionist in Boston, 1037 01:21:53.800 --> 01:21:57.239 and he's friends with William Lloyd Garrison, who spends the 1038 01:21:57.279 --> 01:22:00.560 rest of his life doing this kind of agitation. But 1039 01:22:00.920 --> 01:22:06.560 Noise decides to return to Vermont. He studies theology in college, 1040 01:22:06.680 --> 01:22:09.000 and when he goes back to Vermont, he starts publishing 1041 01:22:09.039 --> 01:22:13.600 a newspaper. Now, it's it's really strange. People people in 1042 01:22:14.000 --> 01:22:20.079 this day read huge amounts of material, even compared to 1043 01:22:20.159 --> 01:22:23.560 our set. I'm just I'm just dumbfounded at the number 1044 01:22:23.600 --> 01:22:27.399 of newspapers and the fact that that people could write 1045 01:22:27.720 --> 01:22:31.760 so much as to publish a newspaper just blows my mind. 1046 01:22:32.399 --> 01:22:36.640 But he publishes a newspaper and and kind of lives 1047 01:22:36.720 --> 01:22:39.760 on the income for a while, which is also just stupendous. 1048 01:22:39.800 --> 01:22:42.880 Like there are people wanting to buy his writing, like 1049 01:22:42.920 --> 01:22:48.439 everyone wants to buy reading material everywhere, even even crackpot 1050 01:22:48.560 --> 01:22:53.199 reading material like like from John Humphrey Noise. He becomes 1051 01:22:53.239 --> 01:22:59.399 known as a perfectionist and preaches the novel doctrine that 1052 01:22:59.479 --> 01:23:05.279 Christians can do no evil, rather like the Shakers. John 1053 01:23:05.359 --> 01:23:11.039 Humphrey Noyes also believes that the Kingdom of God is now, 1054 01:23:11.880 --> 01:23:16.920 we aren't anticipating it, it is right now, and that 1055 01:23:17.119 --> 01:23:23.600 true Christians commit no sin at all, hence his his uh, 1056 01:23:24.359 --> 01:23:30.399 his moniker perfectionism. Now he has two close friends, a 1057 01:23:30.880 --> 01:23:36.920 young couple and and a third man, I believe, I 1058 01:23:36.920 --> 01:23:40.560 believe this is how the story goes. So, so he 1059 01:23:40.680 --> 01:23:45.079 has like two other men and one one married woman 1060 01:23:45.199 --> 01:23:48.399 in his set who is married to one of these men. 1061 01:23:50.079 --> 01:23:53.000 The woman ends up having an affair with the single 1062 01:23:53.039 --> 01:23:56.159 man in his little sect. Now at this point, he 1063 01:23:56.239 --> 01:24:00.520 has a church of of four okay, so he has 1064 01:24:00.560 --> 01:24:03.279 a very very small group, but he's still publishing this 1065 01:24:03.399 --> 01:24:11.039 newspaper of publicizing his ideas. John Humphrey Noise says, well, 1066 01:24:11.279 --> 01:24:16.399 no one here has done anything wrong. We are all 1067 01:24:16.439 --> 01:24:24.119 members of this perfect church, and this is not adultery. 1068 01:24:24.159 --> 01:24:27.960 But he also realizes this presents a unique problem, so 1069 01:24:28.239 --> 01:24:35.880 he formulates a new doctrine called complex marriage. Now, obviously, 1070 01:24:35.920 --> 01:24:41.800 the woman's husband is not okay with his wife having 1071 01:24:41.840 --> 01:24:46.239 this affair. She assures him that everything is fine because 1072 01:24:46.239 --> 01:24:49.520 she's a perfect Christian and he should not feel so 1073 01:24:49.600 --> 01:24:51.880 bad about this that he might be in sin for 1074 01:24:52.000 --> 01:24:56.399 feeling bad about this. John Humphrey Noise sides with her 1075 01:24:58.199 --> 01:25:03.600 and says, you should not feel any jealousy. That is 1076 01:25:03.680 --> 01:25:08.199 evil to feel jealousy. Christians should not feel jealousy anymore. 1077 01:25:10.239 --> 01:25:14.840 And so he comes up with his doctrine of complex marriage. 1078 01:25:15.079 --> 01:25:20.359 In the perfectionist Church of John Humphrey Noise. All adult 1079 01:25:20.399 --> 01:25:25.159 men are married to all adult women. Now that doesn't 1080 01:25:25.239 --> 01:25:30.319 mean that they just swap partners every night. No, John 1081 01:25:30.399 --> 01:25:39.000 Humphrey Noise must choose all the couplings. So John Humphrey 1082 01:25:39.039 --> 01:25:42.439 Noise ends up coming up with a complex system of 1083 01:25:42.680 --> 01:25:53.680 eugenics to purify the breed in his church, so dysgenic members, 1084 01:25:54.479 --> 01:26:03.199 ugly people, unattractive people, less intelligent people do not get 1085 01:26:03.239 --> 01:26:09.920 to procreate. John Humphrey Noyes preaches his position of complex 1086 01:26:09.920 --> 01:26:16.479 marriage along with a h a teaching of male continents 1087 01:26:17.039 --> 01:26:21.520 which we need not elaborate on. Basically, the men needed 1088 01:26:21.760 --> 01:26:27.800 permission to UH participate in a an act that could 1089 01:26:27.880 --> 01:26:34.479 be pro creative. And once once he had had formulated 1090 01:26:34.520 --> 01:26:42.359 this this uh eugenics philosophy. John Humphrey Noise was was 1091 01:26:42.439 --> 01:26:51.640 known to be a very popular amongst the new female recruits. Yes, 1092 01:26:53.239 --> 01:26:56.119 so this is this is a very strange story because 1093 01:26:56.399 --> 01:27:01.000 he he had a certain kind of popularity. They were 1094 01:27:01.079 --> 01:27:06.800 chased out of Vermont when it became public that his 1095 01:27:07.000 --> 01:27:12.159 group was engaged in wife swapping. Basically, he was chased 1096 01:27:12.199 --> 01:27:15.239 out of Vermont with threats of violence. He went to 1097 01:27:15.279 --> 01:27:18.800 the town of Oneida, New York, which I think is 1098 01:27:18.840 --> 01:27:23.640 in the Hudson River Valley. I think it is. I 1099 01:27:24.520 --> 01:27:29.960 think it's near Syracuse if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, they 1100 01:27:30.000 --> 01:27:35.680 bought land and of one of his new recruits to 1101 01:27:35.800 --> 01:27:40.800 his church was the owner of a small industrial concern. 1102 01:27:42.479 --> 01:27:48.399 So the whole community, his church community, built a manor 1103 01:27:48.439 --> 01:27:51.119 house to live in. They all lived in the same house. 1104 01:27:51.239 --> 01:27:56.359 Again this idea of the future of humanity in a 1105 01:27:56.520 --> 01:28:02.359 humanist socialist harmony. Everyone lived in giant apartment buildings together, 1106 01:28:05.319 --> 01:28:12.760 renovating the sexual mores, renovating their vision of private property, 1107 01:28:12.920 --> 01:28:15.760 or doing away with their vision of private property. They 1108 01:28:15.960 --> 01:28:21.960 they found prosperity in this industrial concern. They actually made 1109 01:28:21.960 --> 01:28:28.800 a fortune selling, manufacturing and selling animal traps, so like 1110 01:28:29.000 --> 01:28:32.000 beaver traps and things like that. That was their original thing. 1111 01:28:33.520 --> 01:28:38.279 But they but they got to they got to manufacturing 1112 01:28:39.119 --> 01:28:50.800 flat wear and dishes. Eventually, if you advanced the slide, 1113 01:28:51.680 --> 01:28:55.760 this is a photograph of the Oneida community. So Oneida 1114 01:28:56.760 --> 01:29:01.479 is still known as a as a manufacturer of flatwear 1115 01:29:01.600 --> 01:29:07.079 and such. But this cult did not survive the death 1116 01:29:07.199 --> 01:29:13.880 of John Humphrey Noise. After his death, people kind of 1117 01:29:14.079 --> 01:29:18.600 they took the stock in this corporation that they were 1118 01:29:18.640 --> 01:29:22.399 a part of. They took dividends from it, but they stopped, 1119 01:29:22.920 --> 01:29:28.600 they stopped practicing this religion. Interestingly, John Humphrey Nois's own 1120 01:29:28.880 --> 01:29:33.920 son called himself an atheist and grew up in this 1121 01:29:34.000 --> 01:29:39.880 community and was not ostracized for his about atheism. But 1122 01:29:40.279 --> 01:29:42.840 by the time he was more or less left in 1123 01:29:42.920 --> 01:29:46.800 charge of the thing, he dissolved it. The religious component 1124 01:29:46.920 --> 01:29:52.960 did not survive the generation, but the corporation survived the religion, 1125 01:29:53.399 --> 01:29:59.800 which is also curious. Shall I go to the next one? 1126 01:30:00.239 --> 01:30:08.159 Cored ahead, we find a bunch of radical vegetarian evangelists 1127 01:30:08.199 --> 01:30:11.319 during this time, which I'm very amused with. One of 1128 01:30:11.359 --> 01:30:16.760 the most famous is doctor Sylvester Graham. Doctor Graham was 1129 01:30:16.800 --> 01:30:22.680 interested in two things that he made a great deal 1130 01:30:22.720 --> 01:30:28.399 of during his life. Firstly, he preached far and wide 1131 01:30:29.319 --> 01:30:34.319 on the dangers of masturbation, so that was that was 1132 01:30:34.600 --> 01:30:39.359 one of his first pet peeves. The second was he 1133 01:30:39.399 --> 01:30:47.359 believed that all of all human cuisines were wrong. Everyone 1134 01:30:47.399 --> 01:30:51.800 in the world was eating wrong, and if people would 1135 01:30:51.880 --> 01:31:00.359 simply adopt a pure grain based vegetarian diet, then we 1136 01:31:00.399 --> 01:31:03.880 could eliminate a substantial amount of evil from the world. 1137 01:31:05.840 --> 01:31:13.279 So doctor Graham was something of a granola fanatic, and 1138 01:31:13.319 --> 01:31:18.319 that's that's actually where granola comes from. It It comes 1139 01:31:18.520 --> 01:31:26.720 from vegetarian evangelist preachers who combined religious fervor and the 1140 01:31:26.800 --> 01:31:33.159 Gospel with their dietary ideas. Something all Americans should should 1141 01:31:33.560 --> 01:31:38.520 recognize as commonplace. This is a very American phenomenon to 1142 01:31:38.520 --> 01:31:46.319 to pick up radical new diets as a pseudo religious fad. 1143 01:31:46.760 --> 01:31:50.319 It's a very American thing to do. We we live 1144 01:31:50.399 --> 01:31:53.520 in it and and we don't necessarily realize that's that's 1145 01:31:53.600 --> 01:31:57.399 kind of strange, but it strikes other people from other 1146 01:31:57.439 --> 01:32:01.920 parts of the world as strange. And I enjoy seeing 1147 01:32:02.000 --> 01:32:05.239 that as strange. I want to think I've come out 1148 01:32:05.319 --> 01:32:10.159 of that. I don't live in that world. But doctor Graham, 1149 01:32:10.239 --> 01:32:16.800 he founded the American Vegetarian Society. He preached against the 1150 01:32:16.920 --> 01:32:21.800 use of coffee, tea, tobacco, and milk. It's very interesting, 1151 01:32:22.199 --> 01:32:25.920 and he popularized the use of a very special flour 1152 01:32:26.399 --> 01:32:31.880 made of whole grain for his followers. And what's very 1153 01:32:31.880 --> 01:32:36.880 interesting is doctor Graham's special diet did not survive, but 1154 01:32:37.840 --> 01:32:44.520 his special flower survived. The Graham Cracker is an American 1155 01:32:44.640 --> 01:32:48.119 thing that came out of this movement, and of course 1156 01:32:48.159 --> 01:32:51.960 none of us eat Graham crackers, thinking of the weird 1157 01:32:52.000 --> 01:32:55.600 religious sect that spawned it. But nevertheless it did come 1158 01:32:55.640 --> 01:33:03.159 from doctor Graham. You may continue, all right, the Miller writes, 1159 01:33:03.760 --> 01:33:08.439 this is another fun group. William Miller was a Baptist pastor. 1160 01:33:09.359 --> 01:33:15.199 He published tracts like you see here popularized these things. 1161 01:33:16.000 --> 01:33:21.359 William Miller, after long study of the Bible, decided that 1162 01:33:21.760 --> 01:33:24.960 he knew the day and the hour that Christ would return. 1163 01:33:27.119 --> 01:33:31.600 So he said the end of the world would take 1164 01:33:31.640 --> 01:33:36.680 place in eighteen forty three. I believe, taking thirty three 1165 01:33:36.720 --> 01:33:42.159 according to your sides. But oh, maybe I get Maybe 1166 01:33:42.159 --> 01:33:42.640 I got that. 1167 01:33:42.640 --> 01:33:46.359 Wrong because eighteen forty three in this in this newspaper clipping, 1168 01:33:46.359 --> 01:33:47.079 so it must just be. 1169 01:33:46.960 --> 01:33:50.640 Within the slide. Maybe it's wrong in the slide. My 1170 01:33:50.760 --> 01:33:56.479 mistake there. I'll have to touch that up. So William Miller 1171 01:33:56.840 --> 01:34:02.359 encouraged his followers based on his mathematical work with the 1172 01:34:02.439 --> 01:34:06.000 Old Testament. He encouraged his followers to sell everything that 1173 01:34:06.039 --> 01:34:11.239 they had, dress in white robes, and go to high 1174 01:34:11.359 --> 01:34:16.399 a high place, a hilltop, so that they could watch 1175 01:34:16.439 --> 01:34:20.239 the return of Christ in the sky and watch the 1176 01:34:20.359 --> 01:34:25.840 judgment of wicked humanity, and they would see the establishment 1177 01:34:25.880 --> 01:34:30.000 of the new Heaven and the new Earth. So this 1178 01:34:30.199 --> 01:34:37.079 was known as the Great Disappointment, ironically by detractors who 1179 01:34:37.159 --> 01:34:43.199 came up with this term for this day. Millerites mostly 1180 01:34:43.239 --> 01:34:47.960 in New York, which is where this movement was most popular. 1181 01:34:48.800 --> 01:34:54.600 New York, Ohio, Vermont, Massachusetts. It kind of spans that area. 1182 01:34:55.199 --> 01:34:58.560 They sold all that they had. They were preaching to 1183 01:34:58.600 --> 01:35:01.399 their neighbors to repair, for the Kingdom of Heaven is 1184 01:35:01.439 --> 01:35:05.479 at hand. You know, they're they're using lots of biblical injunctions. 1185 01:35:05.680 --> 01:35:12.880 They go up onto hilltops and nothing happens, and they're disbelieving. 1186 01:35:13.079 --> 01:35:16.560 Neighbors mock them for it. Now, surprisingly this is not 1187 01:35:16.680 --> 01:35:20.760 the end of the Miller Rights. William Miller says, oh, well, 1188 01:35:20.800 --> 01:35:24.920 I got it wrong by a year, and some some 1189 01:35:25.119 --> 01:35:29.760 go up to the hilltop the next year, but again 1190 01:35:29.880 --> 01:35:33.600 nothing happens. They do not see the judgment of humanity, 1191 01:35:34.119 --> 01:35:38.000 and once again they are disgraced. But rather than disband 1192 01:35:38.560 --> 01:35:46.600 this movement, Miller's followers develop something new and something lasting. 1193 01:35:47.680 --> 01:35:52.560 They develop a denomination, if you will, that is still 1194 01:35:52.560 --> 01:35:58.479 with us today, the Seventh Day Adventists. Now William Miller 1195 01:35:58.560 --> 01:36:01.840 does not come up with with many of the peculiar 1196 01:36:01.880 --> 01:36:05.319 teachings of this group. It is his followers who come 1197 01:36:05.439 --> 01:36:08.680 up with many of these peculiar teachings. In particular, another 1198 01:36:09.399 --> 01:36:15.439 woman mystic. There are a number of female mystics that 1199 01:36:15.479 --> 01:36:18.720 are involved with in the foundation of these groups. And 1200 01:36:19.000 --> 01:36:24.399 I forget this woman's name, but she sees a vision 1201 01:36:25.159 --> 01:36:30.600 of the Ten Commandments, and it's based on this vision 1202 01:36:30.960 --> 01:36:36.479 that the Seventh day Adventists worship on Saturday instead of Sunday. 1203 01:36:37.640 --> 01:36:39.920 Her name was Ellen Gould White. 1204 01:36:41.239 --> 01:36:45.840 There we Go, There we Go, one of their prophetesses. 1205 01:36:48.640 --> 01:36:54.399 So she popularizes this this new practice that they should 1206 01:36:54.479 --> 01:36:59.279 keep the Jewish Sabbath, and Seventh day Adventists have many 1207 01:36:59.479 --> 01:37:06.279 dietary restrictions because they attempt to follow Jewish dietary practices. 1208 01:37:06.520 --> 01:37:12.039 They attempt to keep kosher. Now, because Seventh Day Adventists 1209 01:37:12.159 --> 01:37:17.920 are not in urban areas, typically they tend to be 1210 01:37:18.159 --> 01:37:24.359 in rural areas in the countryside, they frequently just practice 1211 01:37:24.479 --> 01:37:31.439 vegetarianism rather than attempt to find kosher prepared foods. But 1212 01:37:31.640 --> 01:37:35.079 because they are so invested in a special practice of food, 1213 01:37:36.399 --> 01:37:43.720 the Seventh day Adventists started food companies. So doctor Kellogg 1214 01:37:44.359 --> 01:37:50.720 of Battle Creek, Michigan, a follower of doctor Graham up 1215 01:37:50.760 --> 01:37:55.039 in Connecticut. Doctor Kellogg becomes a Seventh Day Adventist and 1216 01:37:55.279 --> 01:38:01.680 invents the cornflake. Now, doctor Kellogg is also following some 1217 01:38:02.000 --> 01:38:05.840 Grammite ideas. In addition to being a Seventh Day Adventist, 1218 01:38:06.239 --> 01:38:11.479 doctor Kellogg is also a vegan like doctor Graham was. 1219 01:38:12.279 --> 01:38:17.279 So doctor Kellogg invinced the corn flake as a breakfast cereal. 1220 01:38:19.039 --> 01:38:23.079 He imagines and teaches. Now, this is not what Seventh 1221 01:38:23.119 --> 01:38:26.920 Day Adventists claim, but this this has more in common 1222 01:38:26.920 --> 01:38:31.199 with what doctor Graham claimed. But Kellogg believes if he 1223 01:38:31.279 --> 01:38:37.840 can change the American diet to make it vegetarian one day, 1224 01:38:38.000 --> 01:38:42.840 one meal a day, that he could mathematically reduce the 1225 01:38:42.880 --> 01:38:48.760 amount of evil in the world by one third. So 1226 01:38:48.840 --> 01:38:53.359 he popularized his corn flakes. And this is one of 1227 01:38:53.399 --> 01:38:56.680 the reasons why Americans have two visions of breakfast food. 1228 01:38:57.880 --> 01:39:03.960 We have the cereal thanks to doctor Kellogg, the cereal breakfast. Now, 1229 01:39:04.079 --> 01:39:11.079 Doctor Kellogg, being a vegan, would not suggest milk with this. 1230 01:39:11.439 --> 01:39:17.039 He wanted people to eat it with water. But Americans 1231 01:39:17.079 --> 01:39:19.079 have more taste than that, and so we eat the 1232 01:39:19.680 --> 01:39:23.319 cereal with milk, of course, But that that was doctor 1233 01:39:23.399 --> 01:39:29.479 Kellogg's idea. Another another famous Seventh Day Adventist food maker 1234 01:39:30.159 --> 01:39:35.199 is the founders of Little Debbie Cakes, which are made 1235 01:39:35.319 --> 01:39:41.439 according to Jewish ceremonial law. Strangely enough, because their Seventh 1236 01:39:41.479 --> 01:39:46.840 Day Adventists, I think I think the writers of the 1237 01:39:46.880 --> 01:39:53.399 epistles would call them judaizers. Are ready to go into 1238 01:39:53.399 --> 01:39:58.279 the next one, Yes, go right ahead right. Another another 1239 01:39:58.840 --> 01:40:04.840 unusual group here is the Christian Scientists, founded by Mary 1240 01:40:04.920 --> 01:40:11.279 Baker Eddie, who was from New Hampshire. Mary Baker Eddie 1241 01:40:11.840 --> 01:40:21.239 started a franchise of health spas. These are these are 1242 01:40:21.479 --> 01:40:23.920 what is the word I'm looking for? They're kind of 1243 01:40:24.000 --> 01:40:32.159 like resorts asylums. An asylum might be the word I'm 1244 01:40:32.159 --> 01:40:36.680 looking for. It doesn't sound quite right. Anyway, There we go. 1245 01:40:36.720 --> 01:40:41.079 A sanitarium. Sorry for that, my brain just just stopped working. 1246 01:40:41.720 --> 01:40:46.760 Sanitarium sorts of organizations where people would go for rest cures. 1247 01:40:47.960 --> 01:40:54.600 She was a student of innovative interpretations of the Bible. 1248 01:40:55.680 --> 01:40:59.760 She ends up writing this book Science and Health. Now, 1249 01:40:59.760 --> 01:41:01.840 if you look carefully at this, you can see she 1250 01:41:01.880 --> 01:41:06.000 wrote the book before she was married. The name on 1251 01:41:06.039 --> 01:41:10.520 the book is Glover. She was Mary Baker Glover Eddie, 1252 01:41:11.039 --> 01:41:15.640 so she became She married mister Eddie and took the 1253 01:41:15.720 --> 01:41:19.640 name Eddie. But she wrote this book Science and Health 1254 01:41:19.680 --> 01:41:24.159 as a key to the Scriptures. Mary Baker Eddie is 1255 01:41:24.199 --> 01:41:30.359 what we would call a gnostic. She believed that the 1256 01:41:30.399 --> 01:41:36.720 physical world was an illusion. We do not have bodies. 1257 01:41:37.479 --> 01:41:44.520 According to miss Eddie, the physical world does not exist. Therefore, 1258 01:41:45.840 --> 01:41:49.640 if you have an ailment in your body, you need 1259 01:41:49.680 --> 01:41:53.800 to believe that your body is not real, that you 1260 01:41:53.800 --> 01:41:59.800 were actually a healthy Christian soul. Now, to be a 1261 01:42:00.039 --> 01:42:04.319 Christian in missus Eddie's formulation means to deny the incarnation 1262 01:42:04.600 --> 01:42:07.640 of our Lord. She did not believe that Christ had 1263 01:42:07.640 --> 01:42:12.359 a body either. Okay, so this is not traditional Christianity 1264 01:42:12.399 --> 01:42:14.720 at all. This is gnosticism. This is something that was 1265 01:42:14.760 --> 01:42:20.159 condemned in the first century by the Apostolic fathers. The 1266 01:42:20.159 --> 01:42:23.920 denial of the incarnation is one of the earliest Christian heresies. 1267 01:42:24.279 --> 01:42:27.880 But Mary Baker Eddie was a gnostic. She denied the incarnation, 1268 01:42:28.000 --> 01:42:32.640 and she said that all cures were based in faith. 1269 01:42:34.119 --> 01:42:37.039 So you just had to believe properly and you would 1270 01:42:37.039 --> 01:42:44.000 feel no pain and presumably experienced no evil. If you 1271 01:42:44.079 --> 01:42:49.000 advance and take a look at Christian Science reading rooms. 1272 01:42:52.319 --> 01:42:57.079 This is what they call the mother Church. This is 1273 01:42:57.119 --> 01:43:02.920 the largest of the Christian science reading rooms. It's in Boston, Massachusetts, 1274 01:43:03.000 --> 01:43:07.159 which is where it is based. This had its day. 1275 01:43:07.520 --> 01:43:12.199 I think they do not publicize the numbers of their members, 1276 01:43:13.279 --> 01:43:16.159 but it really does seem to be in sharp decline 1277 01:43:16.199 --> 01:43:19.319 at this point. Lots of Christian science reading rooms have 1278 01:43:19.439 --> 01:43:25.119 closed and been converted into into Christian churches usually. But 1279 01:43:25.439 --> 01:43:29.640 one thing that you note here is the lack of symbolism, 1280 01:43:31.000 --> 01:43:36.199 the centrality of a podium for a speaker. This is 1281 01:43:36.239 --> 01:43:41.439 a very intellectual experience and that is something that you 1282 01:43:41.439 --> 01:43:44.439 can recognize about the Christian scientists found it as they 1283 01:43:44.479 --> 01:43:47.840 were in New England. They correspond to the Puritan tradition 1284 01:43:48.600 --> 01:43:57.880 of religion as an intellectual exercise, minimizing the importance of sacraments, 1285 01:43:58.399 --> 01:44:05.439 say which Puritans were. Puritans were very very focused on 1286 01:44:05.520 --> 01:44:10.000 the on the sermon, all right? 1287 01:44:10.079 --> 01:44:15.640 The uh, the way by what you you go through 1288 01:44:15.680 --> 01:44:19.000 slides on stream yards is a little messy. 1289 01:44:19.720 --> 01:44:20.039 What are you? 1290 01:44:22.319 --> 01:44:24.920 Oh? What's okay? We should be good? Sorry about that, 1291 01:44:25.760 --> 01:44:26.680 No trouble. 1292 01:44:27.920 --> 01:44:30.960 All right. Now, Now we get to our our final 1293 01:44:32.520 --> 01:44:37.800 experience in this in this overview and that is the Mormons. 1294 01:44:38.479 --> 01:44:43.560 They are certainly the largest, most important product of the 1295 01:44:43.600 --> 01:44:49.119 Second Great Awakening, the most perhaps the most important American 1296 01:44:49.319 --> 01:44:54.680 made religious innovation. Now, of course, the Mormons are all 1297 01:44:54.720 --> 01:45:02.479 over the world, based in the in the most unusual place, 1298 01:45:02.960 --> 01:45:09.760 based over in Utah. They're running a kind of global church. Now, 1299 01:45:11.560 --> 01:45:14.920 and it's such a unique story. It does, it does 1300 01:45:15.239 --> 01:45:21.199 merit some in depth uh, in depth storytelling here Mormon. 1301 01:45:21.359 --> 01:45:28.520 The Mormon church is called Mormons by outsiders. The adherence 1302 01:45:28.680 --> 01:45:32.319 to this church call it the Church of Jesus Christ 1303 01:45:32.479 --> 01:45:40.479 of Latter day Saints. It is founded by the the 1304 01:45:40.640 --> 01:45:47.800 LDS prophet founder Joseph Smith of Vermont, another New Englander. 1305 01:45:47.960 --> 01:45:53.399 We see. Joseph Smith starts out a very interesting career. 1306 01:45:54.399 --> 01:45:59.920 He's very interested in deavening rods, so he has magical 1307 01:46:00.199 --> 01:46:06.600 sticks that he uses to find things buried in the ground. Now, 1308 01:46:06.760 --> 01:46:11.159 this is this is a very interesting practice. I don't 1309 01:46:11.159 --> 01:46:15.720 know the origins of it. This is presumably something very old. 1310 01:46:16.239 --> 01:46:22.319 I had a relation that used devening rods to find 1311 01:46:22.479 --> 01:46:29.359 oil and gas down here in Louisiana. And he was 1312 01:46:29.399 --> 01:46:32.840 one of my favorite relatives. I really love this guy. 1313 01:46:33.079 --> 01:46:37.239 He was He was a real character. I love my 1314 01:46:37.399 --> 01:46:42.520 uncle Joe. He tried getting in touch with me right 1315 01:46:42.560 --> 01:46:45.039 before he died, and I still I still regret that 1316 01:46:45.520 --> 01:46:48.319 I didn't reconnect with him. I didn't know that he 1317 01:46:48.359 --> 01:46:52.159 was about to die, obviously, but I loved that guy. 1318 01:46:52.399 --> 01:46:54.479 But anyway, there are other people that do stuff with 1319 01:46:54.520 --> 01:46:57.880 devening rods. But Joseph Smith had a reputation for looking 1320 01:46:57.880 --> 01:47:01.720 for buried treasure. He lived in what is called the 1321 01:47:01.800 --> 01:47:05.439 Burned Over District. Now this is this area of intense 1322 01:47:06.119 --> 01:47:11.239 reformist activity during the Second Great Awakening. You have lots 1323 01:47:11.319 --> 01:47:16.800 of abolitionist radicals that are starting churches in the name 1324 01:47:16.840 --> 01:47:25.039 of abolitionist politics. You have Miller Rights, you have utopian communes, 1325 01:47:25.079 --> 01:47:28.880 and all sorts of curious things going on. Joseph Smith 1326 01:47:29.439 --> 01:47:35.119 writes a very interesting introduction to the Book of Mormon, 1327 01:47:36.680 --> 01:47:42.960 which is worth your time. I take this man seriously, 1328 01:47:43.079 --> 01:47:45.520 and I don't know what's going on with him. I 1329 01:47:45.600 --> 01:47:48.800 am not a Mormon, and I'm not sympathetic to Mormon theology. 1330 01:47:50.119 --> 01:47:54.359 I categorically reject it. But that does not mean that 1331 01:47:54.439 --> 01:48:01.840 I think Joseph Smith was a liar, and I would 1332 01:48:01.840 --> 01:48:05.960 beg I beg your indulgence on the seeming paradox of that. 1333 01:48:07.600 --> 01:48:12.159 I happen to believe people can have mystical experiences and 1334 01:48:12.520 --> 01:48:18.520 that not not all mystical experiences come from God. Okay, 1335 01:48:18.760 --> 01:48:22.439 they can come from lying spirit spirits too, which is 1336 01:48:22.479 --> 01:48:27.159 why Christians are commanded to test the spirits and uh 1337 01:48:27.399 --> 01:48:31.000 not go find found their own religions and such. Christians 1338 01:48:31.039 --> 01:48:34.880 aren't allowed to do that. But Joseph Smith writes about 1339 01:48:35.079 --> 01:48:39.439 growing up in western New York State and going to 1340 01:48:39.520 --> 01:48:47.319 revival meetings, and he writes very sincerely about this that 1341 01:48:47.840 --> 01:48:51.920 it made him very confused, and it made his neighbors 1342 01:48:52.000 --> 01:48:59.960 very confused. Smith says that after years of Revivalist meetings 1343 01:49:00.680 --> 01:49:05.119 and the foundations of various churches that claim different doctrines 1344 01:49:05.159 --> 01:49:12.800 in different practices, he was left thinking that religion was discredited, 1345 01:49:14.720 --> 01:49:20.640 that religion was not something for serious people, that Christianity 1346 01:49:20.840 --> 01:49:29.640 was a confused mess. And this is I think a 1347 01:49:29.199 --> 01:49:33.600 good a good capstone to our investigation here, because what 1348 01:49:33.720 --> 01:49:35.880 are the results of these things. I think it does 1349 01:49:35.920 --> 01:49:39.880 discredit faith. I think it does discredit faithful people. It 1350 01:49:39.880 --> 01:49:44.840 does discredit religious tradition as such. Even though it is 1351 01:49:44.880 --> 01:49:48.399 a modernist thing, it's built in a rejection of tradition. 1352 01:49:48.760 --> 01:49:51.760 We might say that that's another critique, that it's not 1353 01:49:51.880 --> 01:49:58.119 actually traditional at all, But Justice Smith's observation is I 1354 01:49:58.119 --> 01:50:04.159 think very sincere and important in these circumstances. Joseph Smith 1355 01:50:04.199 --> 01:50:11.560 says that he received a vision of God eventually. I think. 1356 01:50:11.680 --> 01:50:15.039 I think at first it is an angel named Moroni 1357 01:50:15.920 --> 01:50:19.600 who speaks to him, and then God the Father and 1358 01:50:19.680 --> 01:50:24.479 God the Son speak to him. Now, in the the 1359 01:50:24.760 --> 01:50:28.600 Mormon understanding, there is no trinity. These people do not 1360 01:50:28.720 --> 01:50:33.479 believe in the trinity of God. They believe that Jesus 1361 01:50:33.760 --> 01:50:39.279 is the literal son of God the Father through a 1362 01:50:39.359 --> 01:50:46.199 female who is spiritual. I believe not. It is not 1363 01:50:48.239 --> 01:50:52.079 that they aren't talking about the Virgin Mary in this context. 1364 01:50:52.479 --> 01:50:57.880 Is something else anyway? This is this is a Mormon 1365 01:50:57.960 --> 01:51:01.720 artwork of the young Joseph's Smith conversing with God the 1366 01:51:01.760 --> 01:51:08.359 Father and God the Son. He receives in these visions 1367 01:51:09.119 --> 01:51:15.840 instruction that the Church, the Christian Church, has gone wrong 1368 01:51:16.680 --> 01:51:23.159 ever since the time of the Apostles, so all of 1369 01:51:23.239 --> 01:51:29.479 Western Christianity is wrong. That the church ceased to exist. 1370 01:51:30.560 --> 01:51:36.239 The Church of Christ founded at Pentecost ceased to exist. 1371 01:51:36.600 --> 01:51:42.079 According to the Mormons, this means that the Catholics, the Orthodox, 1372 01:51:42.239 --> 01:51:47.640 the Lutherans, the Baptists. They're all wrong. None of them 1373 01:51:47.720 --> 01:51:50.520 understand the Bible correctly. None of them are practicing the 1374 01:51:50.600 --> 01:51:58.960 religion of Christ. And Joseph Smith is appointed to restore 1375 01:51:59.159 --> 01:52:03.880 the Church of Christ in America, and he's to do 1376 01:52:03.960 --> 01:52:12.720 this with a particular American source. So the angel Moroney 1377 01:52:13.760 --> 01:52:18.800 leads Joseph Smith to a hilltop in Vermont, in southern Vermont, 1378 01:52:19.520 --> 01:52:26.000 where is buried golden plates inscribed with something Joseph Smith 1379 01:52:26.079 --> 01:52:32.760 describes as reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics. That this is the site 1380 01:52:33.119 --> 01:52:38.119 in southern Vermont. This is the hill where the Mormons 1381 01:52:38.119 --> 01:52:42.359 have built a monument to commemorate the finding of the 1382 01:52:42.399 --> 01:52:46.039 Book of Mormon by Joseph Smith. Now this is a 1383 01:52:46.159 --> 01:52:51.000 very interesting document, or it pretends to be a historical 1384 01:52:51.159 --> 01:52:58.079 ancient document. Joseph Smith said that this was the record 1385 01:52:59.159 --> 01:53:05.800 of Jews who had crossed the Atlantic Ocean before Christ 1386 01:53:06.840 --> 01:53:13.800 and had established a pre Columbian continental civilization in what 1387 01:53:13.960 --> 01:53:20.119 is now the United States, and had been utterly exterminated 1388 01:53:20.239 --> 01:53:26.680 to a man by the people who are now Native Americans. 1389 01:53:28.319 --> 01:53:33.000 So there were no Jews left in America by the 1390 01:53:33.079 --> 01:53:41.159 time Columbus and the Anglo colonists arrive. All right, he's 1391 01:53:41.199 --> 01:53:43.960 not and he's not saying that Native Americans are Jews. 1392 01:53:44.079 --> 01:53:50.079 Though Native Americans have always had a the Mormons have 1393 01:53:50.119 --> 01:53:53.640 always been very interested in Native Americans for this reason. 1394 01:53:55.880 --> 01:53:59.680 The Book of Mormon is the record of the last Mormon, 1395 01:54:00.159 --> 01:54:04.199 or the last Jewish patriarch, whose name is Mormon. He 1396 01:54:04.239 --> 01:54:08.560 writes the story of his people and buries it. Now 1397 01:54:08.880 --> 01:54:12.279 what makes this part of particular importance. Not only are 1398 01:54:12.359 --> 01:54:17.560 these Jewish people, but Christ visited them. The Mormons believe 1399 01:54:17.680 --> 01:54:22.079 Christ had a ministry in Palestine and that Christ had 1400 01:54:22.079 --> 01:54:30.000 a ministry in America to his Jewish tribes here in 1401 01:54:30.399 --> 01:54:33.560 what is now the United States. So Christ had two 1402 01:54:33.760 --> 01:54:38.000 ministries on earth, according to the Mormons. And that's why 1403 01:54:38.000 --> 01:54:42.760 they call the Book of Mormon another gospel of Jesus Christ. 1404 01:54:43.840 --> 01:54:49.479 They claim it is a lost gospel if you advance. 1405 01:54:54.840 --> 01:54:59.239 So with the Book of Mormon, which is inscribed on 1406 01:54:59.600 --> 01:55:06.680 gold plates. So this is like a book with metal pages. Okay, 1407 01:55:06.960 --> 01:55:10.039 here is here is an artistic portrayal of what Mormons 1408 01:55:10.039 --> 01:55:15.520 think it looked like. All right, he finds as well 1409 01:55:16.159 --> 01:55:20.840 the Urim and the I'm gonna get this wrong. I'm 1410 01:55:20.880 --> 01:55:23.279 remembering it, but don't I don't know the word the 1411 01:55:23.439 --> 01:55:30.239 urim and the theream. These are biblical artifacts. So the 1412 01:55:30.520 --> 01:55:38.720 Old Testament mentions the priesthood of Israel having stones that 1413 01:55:39.760 --> 01:55:44.039 they use in a kind of ritual. They can use 1414 01:55:44.079 --> 01:55:47.800 these stones to detect the guilt or innocence of someone 1415 01:55:47.840 --> 01:55:51.159 accused of a crime, for instance. This is all in 1416 01:55:51.199 --> 01:55:53.760 the Mosaic Law. So this is in the Old Testament. 1417 01:55:55.560 --> 01:56:00.479 Joseph Smith claims that he recovered those stones the Book 1418 01:56:00.520 --> 01:56:05.359 of Mormon on the hilltop in Vermont. He also claims 1419 01:56:05.359 --> 01:56:11.880 that he found a breastplate that the stones are attached to. Now, 1420 01:56:12.119 --> 01:56:17.600 I like this portrayal right here. Joseph Smith did not 1421 01:56:17.760 --> 01:56:20.800 give us an illustration of these things, not to my 1422 01:56:20.920 --> 01:56:24.399 knowledge anyway. I'm not aware of that for sure, but 1423 01:56:24.600 --> 01:56:27.319 I don't think he did. I think this right here, 1424 01:56:27.439 --> 01:56:32.800 this is a modern Mormon artistic expression of what they 1425 01:56:32.800 --> 01:56:37.159 believe Joseph Smith found with the Book of Mormon. What 1426 01:56:37.199 --> 01:56:47.560 this is magical magical eyeglasses that translate the reformed Egyptian 1427 01:56:47.680 --> 01:56:55.960 hieroglyphics in the metal plates that he found. The Mormons 1428 01:56:56.039 --> 01:57:00.520 say Joseph Smith translated the book that they call the 1429 01:57:00.520 --> 01:57:07.279 Book of Mormon. In this manner, he publishes this book 1430 01:57:08.359 --> 01:57:13.600 in I think he translates it in northern Pennsylvania. He 1431 01:57:13.680 --> 01:57:18.800 publishes it in western New York as another Gospel of 1432 01:57:18.920 --> 01:57:25.119 Jesus Christ and starts a new church, a rest a 1433 01:57:25.199 --> 01:57:33.680 restorationist cult if you will, cult, meaning a following with 1434 01:57:34.159 --> 01:57:39.560 this movement and in his adherents. He moves westward. First 1435 01:57:39.560 --> 01:57:46.560 he goes to northern Ohio, a place settled mostly with 1436 01:57:46.640 --> 01:57:51.199 New Englanders, the same area where you find Oberlin College. 1437 01:57:51.359 --> 01:57:54.560 Actually this is this is an area that's that's very 1438 01:57:54.600 --> 01:57:59.159 important in the second grade Awakening. But he keeps getting 1439 01:57:59.239 --> 01:58:02.880 chased away because this is this is a very radical 1440 01:58:02.920 --> 01:58:07.800 preaching or teaching that he has. He goes to Missouri. 1441 01:58:08.840 --> 01:58:13.680 He claims that independence Missouri, which is right beside Kansas City, 1442 01:58:14.680 --> 01:58:19.960 is going to be a capital in some spiritual sense 1443 01:58:21.319 --> 01:58:26.720 for America, but is unable to stay in Missouri. He 1444 01:58:27.159 --> 01:58:36.279 faces major backlash and persecution from the Missourians. There are 1445 01:58:36.279 --> 01:58:39.399 a lot of stories of these Mormon missionaries, uh, these 1446 01:58:39.439 --> 01:58:45.760 Mormon evangelists getting very hostile receptions in these frontier communities. 1447 01:58:46.560 --> 01:58:51.520 But Joseph Smith ends up in a town called navu Illinois. 1448 01:58:51.920 --> 01:58:56.840 Now he founds this town. He names it Nauvoo in 1449 01:58:57.159 --> 01:59:01.159 a U v o O. And it is on the 1450 01:59:01.199 --> 01:59:04.920 Mississippi River. And it's it's kind of at the at 1451 01:59:04.960 --> 01:59:10.479 the corner of Missouri Iowa in Illinois. So it's it's 1452 01:59:10.600 --> 01:59:19.159 rather near Hannibal, Missouri. And is it Moline, Illinois up 1453 01:59:19.199 --> 01:59:23.359 that way, it's it's rather Quincy, Illinois. Quincy, Illinois is 1454 01:59:23.359 --> 01:59:29.079 one of those towns. It's on the Mississippi River. They 1455 01:59:29.199 --> 01:59:32.479 build a town there. They build a temple there. I 1456 01:59:32.520 --> 01:59:39.840 think this is their second temple. And Joseph Smith proclaims 1457 01:59:40.159 --> 01:59:46.039 two very interesting things. First, he says that God wants 1458 01:59:46.239 --> 01:59:53.840 all Mormon men to practice polygamy. And Joseph Smith, according 1459 01:59:53.880 --> 01:59:57.680 to some accounts, there is controversy on this point and 1460 01:59:57.720 --> 02:00:01.119 that and this is a very interesting controversy. I don't 1461 02:00:01.359 --> 02:00:04.760 we know what it's about. That there's controversy about how 1462 02:00:04.840 --> 02:00:12.039 many wives Joseph Smith ended up taking. On one group 1463 02:00:12.119 --> 02:00:15.960 of Mormons. Those that follow the son of Joseph Smith 1464 02:00:16.960 --> 02:00:22.439 deny that he ever claimed a teaching of polygamy and 1465 02:00:22.479 --> 02:00:28.399 that he ever married anyone but his first wife, which 1466 02:00:28.439 --> 02:00:32.880 is a really wild claim of the Mormons in Utah, 1467 02:00:33.199 --> 02:00:39.239 which are the predominant Mormon sect. They're overwhelmingly the largest 1468 02:00:39.479 --> 02:00:43.840 Mormon sect. They claim that Joseph Smith married dozens of women, 1469 02:00:46.239 --> 02:00:49.880 and this is this is a really peculiar story. How 1470 02:00:49.880 --> 02:00:52.880 did he manage to do this? He did this mostly 1471 02:00:52.960 --> 02:00:57.319 in secret, but the teaching of the Mormons and their 1472 02:00:57.319 --> 02:01:02.479 practice of polygamy becomes known. The second thing that he 1473 02:01:02.520 --> 02:01:07.159 does is he runs for president of the United States. 1474 02:01:09.199 --> 02:01:16.359 Mormons believe that the United States of America is a 1475 02:01:16.600 --> 02:01:27.159 providential organization that is put together and contains divine intent. 1476 02:01:27.920 --> 02:01:33.760 That America is literally a nation chosen by God to 1477 02:01:33.960 --> 02:01:37.560 work God's will on earth. The Mormons believe that the 1478 02:01:37.600 --> 02:01:41.199 Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States 1479 02:01:41.640 --> 02:01:50.159 are divinely inspired. And this is a very important thing. This, 1480 02:01:50.159 --> 02:01:54.479 This has gone to serve Mormons very well in modern times. 1481 02:01:54.560 --> 02:01:59.800 I understand Mormons are great favorites of the FBI and 1482 02:01:59.800 --> 02:02:03.960 the CIA. They like to recruit among them because they 1483 02:02:04.000 --> 02:02:06.800 believe that they are serving God by serving the United 1484 02:02:06.800 --> 02:02:13.960 States government in some way. Anyway, Joseph Smith, while he's 1485 02:02:14.079 --> 02:02:23.520 running for president, he is lynched in Illinois. So Joseph 1486 02:02:23.560 --> 02:02:31.840 Smith he forms a militia in Nauvoo that destroys the 1487 02:02:32.000 --> 02:02:37.359 press of a paper criticizing Joseph Smith and the Mormons, 1488 02:02:38.880 --> 02:02:43.319 rather than run from the warrant issued to him for 1489 02:02:43.439 --> 02:02:50.000 doing this. The charge is treason against the state of Illinois. 1490 02:02:50.760 --> 02:02:55.119 Because he has formed a militia and commanded a military 1491 02:02:55.239 --> 02:02:58.199 formation to carry out an act of violence in the 1492 02:02:58.199 --> 02:03:02.119 state of Illinois. That's treason against the state of Illinois. 1493 02:03:02.159 --> 02:03:05.479 He is usurping the role of the governor, who has 1494 02:03:05.520 --> 02:03:10.640 the sole authority to command military forces in Illinois. So 1495 02:03:10.720 --> 02:03:14.560 Joseph Smith decides to turn himself in to the authorities. 1496 02:03:15.119 --> 02:03:19.960 He goes to the local magistrate who has a jail building, 1497 02:03:21.000 --> 02:03:25.000 and a lynch mob shows up. Joseph Smith is there 1498 02:03:25.039 --> 02:03:28.560 with his brother, Hiram Smith, who is one of his 1499 02:03:29.359 --> 02:03:34.479 key lieutenants. He does everything with Hiram, and the lynch 1500 02:03:34.560 --> 02:03:43.319 mob attacks the jail. Joseph Smith and Hiram are both armed, 1501 02:03:43.560 --> 02:03:46.079 so this is a very interesting thing. They aren't locked 1502 02:03:46.119 --> 02:03:49.840 in a cell here. The magistrate knows that a mob 1503 02:03:49.920 --> 02:03:53.279 is out for blood and he's actually trying to protect them, 1504 02:03:55.079 --> 02:03:59.640 and Joseph Smith and Hiram Smith fight the mob through 1505 02:03:59.760 --> 02:04:03.720 a and in the process, both of them are shot. 1506 02:04:04.239 --> 02:04:08.079 I believe Hiram is shot in the face and Joseph 1507 02:04:08.119 --> 02:04:12.039 Smith is shot elsewhere on his body. Joseph Smith then 1508 02:04:12.199 --> 02:04:15.920 jumps out the window where he is shot several more 1509 02:04:16.000 --> 02:04:22.319 times and succumbs. So this this year is a Mormon 1510 02:04:22.560 --> 02:04:28.840 monument by the jail where the lynching took place. And 1511 02:04:28.880 --> 02:04:34.840 this is a statue of Joseph and Hiram Smith. Now 1512 02:04:34.880 --> 02:04:40.199 this is something as as a history guy in twenty 1513 02:04:40.319 --> 02:04:44.880 twenty three, I have a certain appreciation for the Mormons 1514 02:04:45.720 --> 02:04:54.720 for getting behind their own people. Mormons have repudiated their 1515 02:04:54.760 --> 02:04:57.720 doctrine of polygamy, though they do not deny that Joseph 1516 02:04:57.760 --> 02:05:04.359 Smith and Brigham Young were politeimists and their forefathers were polygamists. 1517 02:05:05.239 --> 02:05:10.279 They don't deny it, but they don't practice it anymore. 1518 02:05:12.399 --> 02:05:14.479 But that doesn't mean that they don't like these people. 1519 02:05:18.359 --> 02:05:23.079 And and they're they're controversial people that do things that 1520 02:05:23.079 --> 02:05:29.359 that Americans traditionally found distasteful and dreadful and wicked. And 1521 02:05:29.439 --> 02:05:33.119 yet Mormons do not back down, and they like their 1522 02:05:33.119 --> 02:05:38.800 own people. And I like that, and I wish that 1523 02:05:39.600 --> 02:05:42.680 other Americans had more of that themselves. I think that's 1524 02:05:42.720 --> 02:05:47.479 a healthy attitude in spite of all the weird and 1525 02:05:47.560 --> 02:05:52.920 untrue things Mormons believe. I really appreciate this about them. So, 1526 02:05:53.079 --> 02:05:57.399 after the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young becomes the 1527 02:05:57.479 --> 02:06:02.439 leader of the Mormons. Young is he presides over a 1528 02:06:02.520 --> 02:06:06.439 kind of church split at the death of Joseph Smith. 1529 02:06:07.279 --> 02:06:12.199 Young is one of Smith's lieutenants, and Young decides to 1530 02:06:12.479 --> 02:06:18.079 abandon Nauvoo, Illinois, the town that the Mormons built. At 1531 02:06:18.079 --> 02:06:22.359 one time, it was one of the largest cities on 1532 02:06:22.439 --> 02:06:28.760 the Mississippi River. It was like it wasn't as big 1533 02:06:28.840 --> 02:06:31.840 as Chicago. It never was as big as Chicago, but 1534 02:06:32.199 --> 02:06:34.159 at one point it was like the second largest city 1535 02:06:34.199 --> 02:06:40.680 in Illinois, is what I want to say. Young decides 1536 02:06:40.720 --> 02:06:44.359 to abandon this. He decides to send a lot of 1537 02:06:44.399 --> 02:06:49.720 missionaries to England, where they recruit lots of new conferts, 1538 02:06:51.319 --> 02:06:55.840 and he decides to move westward to the Great Desert 1539 02:06:56.279 --> 02:07:02.560 beyond the mountains. And so Young travels to what is 1540 02:07:02.600 --> 02:07:09.119 now Utah and founds Salt Lake City, Utah, as the 1541 02:07:09.159 --> 02:07:14.680 new center of the Mormon people. They're going to get 1542 02:07:14.800 --> 02:07:22.279 far away from these hostile Protestants back east. This is 1543 02:07:22.640 --> 02:07:26.159 a really remarkable story because they go to Utah, which 1544 02:07:26.199 --> 02:07:31.479 is a very very forbidding landscape. Young says, this is 1545 02:07:31.560 --> 02:07:35.800 the place which I think is like the slogan of 1546 02:07:35.960 --> 02:07:43.479 Utah today. And they build Salt Lake City, and this 1547 02:07:43.560 --> 02:07:46.479 is a very urban environment, which is also very curious. 1548 02:07:47.520 --> 02:07:51.079 Utah is the most heavily urbanized state in the United 1549 02:07:51.119 --> 02:07:58.720 States today. Young brings his English converts all the way 1550 02:07:58.720 --> 02:08:01.119 from England, all the way out there to the desert. 1551 02:08:01.640 --> 02:08:06.840 They transport their belongings in things like wheelbarrows. They don't 1552 02:08:06.840 --> 02:08:12.159 even have wagons for this trek. They walk all the 1553 02:08:12.159 --> 02:08:18.720 way to Utah. Young Mary's dozens of women. This is 1554 02:08:18.800 --> 02:08:25.880 his house complex. They have several names. One is called 1555 02:08:25.920 --> 02:08:30.560 the Beehive House, one is called the Lion House. Now 1556 02:08:30.720 --> 02:08:33.920 something interesting about Young. He was married when he converted 1557 02:08:33.960 --> 02:08:39.760 to Mormonism and became an apostle of Joseph Smith. That's 1558 02:08:39.800 --> 02:08:44.479 his official title. By the way, they have the Council 1559 02:08:44.600 --> 02:08:52.720 of the Twelve Apostles. These are restored Apostolic chairs. Catholic 1560 02:08:52.920 --> 02:08:56.840 and Orthodox listeners would immediately hone in on that and go, 1561 02:08:56.960 --> 02:09:02.800 oh okay, the Apostolic seats seats to exist. They're all vacant, 1562 02:09:03.479 --> 02:09:09.319 and Joseph Smith filled them, he restored them. There's there's 1563 02:09:09.399 --> 02:09:14.119 a there's a certain recognition that we have there. Anyway, 1564 02:09:14.560 --> 02:09:20.039 his first wife always had predominance. Uh Young's first wife 1565 02:09:20.199 --> 02:09:23.960 had her very own house, and all the other other 1566 02:09:24.039 --> 02:09:28.560 wives lived in other houses. One of these houses is 1567 02:09:28.640 --> 02:09:32.079 rather like a dormitory, okay, where every wife has her 1568 02:09:32.119 --> 02:09:36.000 own little living area, her own little apartment that she 1569 02:09:36.119 --> 02:09:41.720 lives in. But Young's first wife was always the head wife. 1570 02:09:42.399 --> 02:09:48.520 So there's there's a certain similarity there to the complex 1571 02:09:48.840 --> 02:09:55.039 marriages in the Kingdom of Siam, or in a in 1572 02:09:55.079 --> 02:10:00.560 a chikh's hareem or something, or or in the co 1573 02:10:00.760 --> 02:10:08.359 leif's boudoir or whatever. Wherever the Muslims and Pagans keep 1574 02:10:08.399 --> 02:10:12.199 their wives, there is a head wife. There's a wife 1575 02:10:12.199 --> 02:10:17.680 with predominance, and the Mormons adopted that practice too. Polygamy 1576 02:10:17.880 --> 02:10:22.920 has worked, and it has worked in America in the 1577 02:10:22.960 --> 02:10:29.159 sense that it was part of a successful social construction, 1578 02:10:30.439 --> 02:10:35.119 a new society, a new community in which polygamy was 1579 02:10:35.239 --> 02:10:42.800 at the top and widespread within. It's a very strange story. Eventually, 1580 02:10:42.840 --> 02:10:44.840 of course, we know that the Mormons do give up 1581 02:10:44.880 --> 02:10:49.840 that teaching, and we might call them orthodox Mormons today 1582 02:10:50.000 --> 02:10:55.680 do not practice polygamy. It is fundamentalist sectarians in Mormonism 1583 02:10:55.840 --> 02:10:59.880 that practice polygamy. Today in America and elsewhere, there are 1584 02:11:00.159 --> 02:11:07.720 or there are oddball Mormon polygamists. The Mormons build temples 1585 02:11:07.840 --> 02:11:12.359 around Utah. These are two examples. On the right, you 1586 02:11:12.479 --> 02:11:17.159 see the main temple in Salt Lake City that was 1587 02:11:17.199 --> 02:11:22.239 built by Young. On the left you see a smaller 1588 02:11:22.359 --> 02:11:30.800 temple in Saint George, Utah. These are unusual constructions. There 1589 02:11:30.840 --> 02:11:38.199 are American art students that specialize in the oddity of 1590 02:11:38.239 --> 02:11:41.399 this architecture. Just where does this architecture come from? This 1591 02:11:41.920 --> 02:11:47.000 is a curious thing. The Mormons do not always meet 1592 02:11:47.239 --> 02:11:51.319 in temples. There are a limited number of Mormon temples, 1593 02:11:51.880 --> 02:11:56.720 and certain Mormon rights in rituals can only be performed 1594 02:11:56.720 --> 02:12:01.319 in a temple, So Mormons make pilgrimages, if you will, 1595 02:12:01.640 --> 02:12:07.239 to regional temples. Unsurprisingly, most of these temples are in Utah, 1596 02:12:07.800 --> 02:12:13.760 but there are temples spread around the world at this point. Yeah. 1597 02:12:13.800 --> 02:12:17.760 Prominently, there's one near DC, which, if you've ever driven, 1598 02:12:18.640 --> 02:12:22.760 I believe it's ninety five you when you drive from 1599 02:12:23.039 --> 02:12:25.439 Maryland into d C. You can see kind of like 1600 02:12:25.479 --> 02:12:29.199 the top spire of the Mormon Temple, and. 1601 02:12:29.520 --> 02:12:33.199 Those spires frequently have the Mormon emblem on it. The 1602 02:12:33.720 --> 02:12:39.000 symbol usually done in a little gold statue of an 1603 02:12:39.079 --> 02:12:44.039 angel blowing on a horn, and that is the symbol 1604 02:12:44.159 --> 02:12:49.119 of the angel Maroni, who first appeared to Joseph Smith. So, 1605 02:12:49.239 --> 02:12:55.960 as the story goes, an American angel that reveals the 1606 02:12:56.000 --> 02:13:01.039 doctrines of Mormonism. This is a photograph from the interior 1607 02:13:01.199 --> 02:13:04.840 of a Mormon temple. I know this is a very 1608 02:13:04.880 --> 02:13:07.600 strange site for most of us, but this is actually 1609 02:13:07.680 --> 02:13:14.239 an Old Testament image. This is something that's copied from 1610 02:13:15.159 --> 02:13:19.159 what we see for the designs of the temple in Jerusalem, 1611 02:13:19.560 --> 02:13:21.960 or or is it the tabernacle? Is the design for 1612 02:13:22.000 --> 02:13:27.079 the Tabernacle? There is a great basin that is described 1613 02:13:27.239 --> 02:13:34.840 in the Old Testament? Is it the bronze see? Is 1614 02:13:34.840 --> 02:13:36.560 that what these the bronze basin? 1615 02:13:36.640 --> 02:13:38.640 I can't remember the exact word to describe it, but 1616 02:13:38.720 --> 02:13:42.000 isn't it a It's a basin for ritual purification of 1617 02:13:42.039 --> 02:13:42.560 the priests. 1618 02:13:42.560 --> 02:13:45.399 And I'm corrected, that is correct, Yes, it's it's for 1619 02:13:45.640 --> 02:13:50.399 the Jewish priests to to purify themselves. And this bronze 1620 02:13:50.439 --> 02:13:55.119 basin is on the backs of a number of Oxen. 1621 02:13:56.119 --> 02:13:59.119 I forget what number it is, but that's what you're 1622 02:13:59.159 --> 02:14:01.560 seeing here. This is actually an image that you see 1623 02:14:01.560 --> 02:14:06.439 in the Old Testament that the Mormons restored to usage 1624 02:14:06.840 --> 02:14:10.640 in their in their religious practices, and this operates as 1625 02:14:10.680 --> 02:14:16.920 a baptismal font for them. Mormons practice the baptism of 1626 02:14:17.000 --> 02:14:25.520 the dead, so they believe that through proxy baptism of 1627 02:14:25.840 --> 02:14:32.039 Mormon the Mormon faithful, Mormon faithful being baptized in the 1628 02:14:32.159 --> 02:14:37.960 names of people who are dead, can restore those people 1629 02:14:38.119 --> 02:14:44.199 spiritually and make them members of the Mormon Church. And 1630 02:14:44.319 --> 02:14:50.239 for this reason, Mormons have a the most amazing knowledge 1631 02:14:50.279 --> 02:14:58.000 of genealogy, perhaps anyone has ever accomplished in all of history. 1632 02:14:58.279 --> 02:15:01.560 They've devoted great recent sources to this because this is 1633 02:15:01.560 --> 02:15:06.399 a religious tenant for them, and they're interested in saying 1634 02:15:06.439 --> 02:15:11.439 the names of every person who has ever lived in 1635 02:15:11.600 --> 02:15:17.000 proxy baptisms and in keeping these names. So they've built 1636 02:15:17.760 --> 02:15:25.800 doomsday vaults to store the names of baptized Mormons, presumably 1637 02:15:25.880 --> 02:15:28.760 the vast majority of whom are long dead and they've 1638 02:15:28.800 --> 02:15:33.960 been baptized in a proxy baptism. So Mormons have people 1639 02:15:34.159 --> 02:15:37.560 converted to Mormonism will try to find the names of 1640 02:15:37.640 --> 02:15:41.600 all of their ancestors in order to participate in proxy 1641 02:15:41.640 --> 02:15:48.439 baptisms for all of their forebears. I've described all of 1642 02:15:48.439 --> 02:15:53.560 this as restorationism of the idea that the Church founded 1643 02:15:53.560 --> 02:15:56.399 by Christ and the apostles ceased to exist at some 1644 02:15:56.479 --> 02:16:02.399 point in history and must be refounded. So that's what 1645 02:16:02.479 --> 02:16:09.800 this is all based. In one last Mormon story, and 1646 02:16:09.920 --> 02:16:16.920 we will conclude on his way out west, Brigham Young 1647 02:16:17.720 --> 02:16:21.600 had several church splits along the way. There was a 1648 02:16:21.640 --> 02:16:29.000 lot of dissatisfaction with Young's leadership, and the most amusing 1649 02:16:29.039 --> 02:16:31.239 of these stories, at least to me, is that of 1650 02:16:31.359 --> 02:16:36.360 James Strang. James Strang was a follower of Joseph Smith, 1651 02:16:37.319 --> 02:16:44.680 a disciple of Young, who left Young on their movement westward. 1652 02:16:45.639 --> 02:16:53.200 And interestingly, Strang denied that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. 1653 02:16:55.159 --> 02:17:01.079 He said that Young by making Smith's teaching public, which 1654 02:17:01.079 --> 02:17:06.399 is what Young claimed to have done, Strang said that 1655 02:17:06.440 --> 02:17:09.000 he was departing from this teaching of Joseph Smith, and 1656 02:17:09.040 --> 02:17:13.040 so Strang claimed to represent the true teaching of Joseph 1657 02:17:13.079 --> 02:17:18.840 Smith and led a faction away from Young. They went 1658 02:17:19.120 --> 02:17:24.360 to Beaver Island, Michigan, in the middle of Lake Michigan, 1659 02:17:25.680 --> 02:17:28.360 this is an island in the north of Lake Michigan, 1660 02:17:28.959 --> 02:17:34.760 so it's near it's near Wisconsin, I suppose, and started 1661 02:17:34.799 --> 02:17:41.760 his own utopian commune on Beaver Island. He claimed he 1662 02:17:41.959 --> 02:17:48.639 was king. He was crowned on Beaver Island by his followers. 1663 02:17:50.280 --> 02:17:55.600 He then proclaimed polygamy. Now this is very amusing because 1664 02:17:55.959 --> 02:18:01.760 he split from Young because Strang said polygamy was not 1665 02:18:02.000 --> 02:18:07.239 a true Mormon teaching in practice. But when he became 1666 02:18:07.639 --> 02:18:12.319 the leader of his own group, he claimed he proclaimed 1667 02:18:12.360 --> 02:18:16.040 a teaching of polygamy. He claimed that he found his 1668 02:18:16.280 --> 02:18:23.760 own golden plates and he published them, and he was 1669 02:18:23.799 --> 02:18:29.639 elected to the state Legislature of Michigan. It's just, oh, 1670 02:18:30.079 --> 02:18:35.760 very delightful. It is the only self proclaimed self proclaimed 1671 02:18:35.959 --> 02:18:40.840 king to ever sit in the Michigan State Legislature. Maybe 1672 02:18:40.920 --> 02:18:45.360 so it's the only one I know of in America. 1673 02:18:45.920 --> 02:18:51.399 But I yes, yes, I think this is so delightful 1674 02:18:51.799 --> 02:18:55.079 because he would he would serve as an elected representative. 1675 02:18:56.959 --> 02:19:03.719 He had some accomplishments in organizing regional governmental authority in Michigan. 1676 02:19:04.520 --> 02:19:08.360 His goal seems to be the autonomy of Beaver Island 1677 02:19:08.760 --> 02:19:11.520 in the state of Michigan. That seems to be his 1678 02:19:11.559 --> 02:19:14.120 practical purpose, but he ended up doing a lot to 1679 02:19:14.399 --> 02:19:20.040 organize county government, I believe in Michigan, and he's still 1680 02:19:20.079 --> 02:19:24.280 known for that in Michigan, which is delightful. I don't 1681 02:19:24.280 --> 02:19:29.000 I don't know much about Michigan, but maybe maybe this 1682 02:19:29.040 --> 02:19:34.200 guy deserves to be on a future currency of the 1683 02:19:34.239 --> 02:19:38.120 state of Michigan, or needs some statues in Michigan or 1684 02:19:38.120 --> 02:19:43.879 something like that. But his story has has a shocking end. 1685 02:19:45.559 --> 02:19:50.159 Being isolated out on this island, mister Strang King Strang 1686 02:19:52.399 --> 02:19:55.920 would get on ships very frequently and this was a 1687 02:19:55.959 --> 02:19:58.719 place where his enemies knew that they could find him. 1688 02:19:58.760 --> 02:20:01.799 So he would go back and forth from the island 1689 02:20:01.959 --> 02:20:08.159 to the mainland, and one day his enemies jumped him. 1690 02:20:08.280 --> 02:20:15.159 Now these were members of his church who assassinated him, 1691 02:20:16.959 --> 02:20:22.319 and very strangely, they were never prosecuted for the crime. 1692 02:20:22.799 --> 02:20:27.159 There were dozens of witnesses that saw them jump out 1693 02:20:27.360 --> 02:20:30.760 and shoot James Strang while he was walking down the 1694 02:20:30.799 --> 02:20:35.600 gang plank to the ship in the harbor at Beaver Island, 1695 02:20:36.680 --> 02:20:41.000 so there was no shortage of witnesses. But the assailants 1696 02:20:41.040 --> 02:20:48.520 were brought to the mainland by a navy cutter that 1697 02:20:48.760 --> 02:20:54.399 was in port at the time. So the navy brought 1698 02:20:54.440 --> 02:20:59.479 these people to the magistrate. The magistrate released them on 1699 02:20:59.799 --> 02:21:05.639 a trivial bail, and the community on the mainland then 1700 02:21:05.879 --> 02:21:12.000 through them a celebratory dinner and they never faced charges 1701 02:21:12.120 --> 02:21:16.040 for the murder of James Strang. That's hilarious. 1702 02:21:16.120 --> 02:21:18.520 I had no idea about that. 1703 02:21:18.879 --> 02:21:24.559 Yes, this is a this is like a judicial, judicially 1704 02:21:24.559 --> 02:21:25.440 approved murder. 1705 02:21:26.280 --> 02:21:28.879 Well, see, there's a difference between like what the antiphotypes 1706 02:21:28.959 --> 02:21:32.440 mean when they say community policing and what community policing 1707 02:21:32.520 --> 02:21:38.159 actually turns into. Yes, indeed, I mean Lynch's Law is 1708 02:21:38.680 --> 02:21:43.000 an old American tradition. People think that people think Lynch's 1709 02:21:43.079 --> 02:21:47.319 Law is all about racial animus, but there are so 1710 02:21:47.479 --> 02:21:54.280 many examples to the contrary. I always tell my students 1711 02:21:54.399 --> 02:21:59.559 about racial lynching, but but I tell them so many 1712 02:21:59.600 --> 02:22:02.959 stories like this that have nothing to do with race 1713 02:22:03.000 --> 02:22:05.719 at all, and say, well, this is an example. You know, 1714 02:22:05.760 --> 02:22:09.040 sometimes people just really want to kill and they take 1715 02:22:09.079 --> 02:22:12.120 the lawn to their own hands. And this happens many 1716 02:22:12.120 --> 02:22:16.639 times in American history, right, right, So I think we 1717 02:22:16.680 --> 02:22:18.280 have one more slide. 1718 02:22:18.280 --> 02:22:25.440 Yes, I think so. So in in review, what can 1719 02:22:25.479 --> 02:22:30.520 we learn from this? I think that we can recognize 1720 02:22:30.600 --> 02:22:33.520 that a lot of these innovations are still very much 1721 02:22:33.559 --> 02:22:40.639 with us. We see lots of connections with modern progressive 1722 02:22:40.799 --> 02:22:45.600 ideas in the Second Great Awakening. We see the Second 1723 02:22:45.639 --> 02:22:52.479 Great Awakening inspired people to a sort of fanaticism born 1724 02:22:52.559 --> 02:22:58.799 of religious conviction. A fanatic is someone who redoubles their 1725 02:22:58.799 --> 02:23:03.159 efforts when the goal has been lost. The goal has 1726 02:23:03.200 --> 02:23:08.079 been forgotten, so a fanatic ends up working against his 1727 02:23:08.120 --> 02:23:16.719 own goals by increasing the enthusiasm with which he pursues them. 1728 02:23:17.239 --> 02:23:20.280 We see this in American politics. We certainly see it 1729 02:23:20.319 --> 02:23:22.799 in the run up right before the Civil War, with 1730 02:23:23.000 --> 02:23:30.840 people like John Brown the Terrorist. We see like religious 1731 02:23:31.000 --> 02:23:40.520 ideas about a barent sexual behavior, like novel religious sanctions 1732 02:23:40.559 --> 02:23:45.559 for a baran sexual behavior, which is certainly still with us. 1733 02:23:45.760 --> 02:23:50.079 Anytime we hear, you know, transsexualism as holy or something 1734 02:23:50.159 --> 02:23:53.479 like that, were our ears should perk up. This is 1735 02:23:53.479 --> 02:23:57.120 something that has been part of American religious rhetoric for 1736 02:23:57.159 --> 02:24:01.879 a long time. We didn't focus so much about this 1737 02:24:01.959 --> 02:24:07.360 in our presentation today, but there is a lot of 1738 02:24:07.440 --> 02:24:12.079 interest in race and racial relations in many of these movements, 1739 02:24:12.559 --> 02:24:17.559 especially the humanist communes. We see that in particular with 1740 02:24:18.319 --> 02:24:22.440 people like the Shakers who want racial harmony. This is 1741 02:24:22.479 --> 02:24:25.159 one of the things that they preach. They teach the 1742 02:24:25.879 --> 02:24:30.239 Quakers and Shakers both talk about the universal brotherhood of man, 1743 02:24:30.680 --> 02:24:35.200 and that's something that they elevate highly in their religious rhetoric. 1744 02:24:36.639 --> 02:24:39.639 Again making me think that the way that those ideas 1745 02:24:39.680 --> 02:24:44.079 have gone so mainstream as to be counted as as 1746 02:24:44.520 --> 02:24:52.440 doctrine and indisputable by otherwise Orthodox Christians, small Orthodox Christians 1747 02:24:52.440 --> 02:24:55.920 in America today shows just how far those Quaker and 1748 02:24:56.159 --> 02:24:59.959 Shaker ideas have gone in our religious beliefs. In America 1749 02:25:00.200 --> 02:25:04.840 or in the West, there's a lot of interest in 1750 02:25:04.879 --> 02:25:09.559 economic inequality and trying to rectify that with Christian socialism, 1751 02:25:09.799 --> 02:25:18.399 as Finny's critics termed it most disturbingly, a obviously a 1752 02:25:18.440 --> 02:25:23.760 willingness to abandon all manner of orthodox dogma and practice 1753 02:25:24.200 --> 02:25:35.360 for temporal political goals. Finally, I want to reiterate, these 1754 02:25:36.639 --> 02:25:42.600 radical religious innovations were almost exclusively confined to the North, 1755 02:25:43.040 --> 02:25:49.239 to the point that Southern writers on religion and politics, 1756 02:25:50.680 --> 02:25:56.879 people like the Presbyterian R. L. Dabney, who ended his 1757 02:25:56.959 --> 02:26:04.120 life teaching at Hampton Sydney College in Armville, Virginia. R. L. 1758 02:26:04.200 --> 02:26:11.040 Dabney said that this was a This was all examples 1759 02:26:11.079 --> 02:26:16.120 of the Northern religious tradition. This was where Northern religious 1760 02:26:16.159 --> 02:26:23.120 belief led inexorably. And uh he he roundly damned it 1761 02:26:23.200 --> 02:26:26.840 and cursed it frequently. He's he's very colorful in that. 1762 02:26:29.760 --> 02:26:38.079 Other Southern theologians, uh, James Henley Thornwell, other interesting writers. Uh. 1763 02:26:38.159 --> 02:26:44.520 Defenders of Southern institutions, uh, defenders of Southern politics, uh. 1764 02:26:44.520 --> 02:26:49.159 Defenders of the institution of slavery, people like George Fitzhugh 1765 02:26:51.120 --> 02:26:54.920 also had a lot to say about this. They were saying, well, 1766 02:26:54.959 --> 02:26:57.760 these Northerners are are doing all sorts of crazy things. 1767 02:26:57.760 --> 02:27:01.600 Are saying that it's evil to eat meat. They're saying 1768 02:27:01.600 --> 02:27:06.079 that everyone should live in an urban apartment house as 1769 02:27:06.520 --> 02:27:11.520 like a religious tenant. This is impossible in the imagination 1770 02:27:11.639 --> 02:27:15.239 of Southerners at this time in history, where practically no 1771 02:27:15.280 --> 02:27:19.120 one lives in a city. But they aren't centralized, they're 1772 02:27:19.159 --> 02:27:23.760 spread out. They don't want to participate in an industrial economy, 1773 02:27:24.680 --> 02:27:32.879 and they're very suspicious of charismatic personalities starting innovative cult movements. 1774 02:27:33.520 --> 02:27:36.520 Southerners at this point in history do not go in 1775 02:27:36.719 --> 02:27:40.920 on that. Now. Much has changed since then, and I 1776 02:27:40.959 --> 02:27:43.840 think the South has become much more Americanized since then. 1777 02:27:46.000 --> 02:27:49.600 But this is the American scene just at the cusp 1778 02:27:49.680 --> 02:27:51.920 of the Civil War. And I do think it has 1779 02:27:51.959 --> 02:27:55.600 a lot to do with how the war, how the 1780 02:27:55.639 --> 02:28:00.959 war develops, Where does the war come from? Art it 1781 02:28:01.040 --> 02:28:06.879 is religious differences? Well, well again, right. 1782 02:28:06.840 --> 02:28:13.120 It it's so easy, excuse me to take a moment 1783 02:28:13.120 --> 02:28:15.719 to cough. It's very easy to kind of look at, 1784 02:28:16.000 --> 02:28:18.079 you know, the war between the States as a purely 1785 02:28:18.120 --> 02:28:23.680 economic affair or as this like moral crusade of you know, uh, 1786 02:28:23.879 --> 02:28:28.319 like proto Nazis against you know, uh, you know, the 1787 02:28:28.680 --> 02:28:32.159 good and the good and the true and the beautiful, right, but. 1788 02:28:32.079 --> 02:28:40.600 Really fanatics from Oberlin College versus the proto Nazis Southerners, right. 1789 02:28:40.760 --> 02:28:45.600 Right, right, exactly. But really it was to civilizations with 1790 02:28:45.719 --> 02:28:51.959 just fundamentally different beliefs, different religions, different ways of ordering society. 1791 02:28:52.079 --> 02:28:57.360 And I mean it's really no surprise that those that 1792 02:28:57.440 --> 02:29:01.639 those couldn't exist alongside, you know, at least like based 1793 02:29:01.639 --> 02:29:04.079 on kind of like the conditions at the time, right, 1794 02:29:04.120 --> 02:29:07.239 those were those were those things. Two things could not 1795 02:29:07.360 --> 02:29:10.280 be married together, at least in the way that you know, 1796 02:29:10.479 --> 02:29:11.799 the Northerners wanted it to be. 1797 02:29:14.319 --> 02:29:20.920 There is. There's growing conviction, especially in the North, but 1798 02:29:21.079 --> 02:29:28.200 strangely also with the legal minds in the South that 1799 02:29:28.440 --> 02:29:38.120 could not permit diversity of institutions, diversity of beliefs in 1800 02:29:38.559 --> 02:29:42.319 one union anymore. I think it worked for a time. 1801 02:29:44.879 --> 02:29:48.840 States had different established churches. In spite of all of 1802 02:29:48.639 --> 02:29:52.600 our talk about the separation of church and state. The 1803 02:29:52.639 --> 02:29:57.440 First Amendment bans Congress from establishing a national church. It 1804 02:29:57.479 --> 02:29:59.879 does not do anything to prohibit a state from doing so. 1805 02:30:00.360 --> 02:30:04.760 And so I know Massachusetts and Georgia, for instance, both 1806 02:30:04.760 --> 02:30:08.159 of them had established churches after the ratification of the Constitution. 1807 02:30:08.920 --> 02:30:15.360 That is federalism. That's what Americans meant back when they 1808 02:30:15.920 --> 02:30:20.399 adopted the Constitution by a federal government, that the states 1809 02:30:20.440 --> 02:30:25.079 could be different from each other. They could have different economies, 1810 02:30:26.239 --> 02:30:31.319 they could have different populations. Right, tiny little Delaware has 1811 02:30:31.360 --> 02:30:38.120 two senators and so does mighty huge New York. They're 1812 02:30:38.200 --> 02:30:41.319 equal in the Senate. States are different from each other 1813 02:30:41.399 --> 02:30:44.399 in size, different in population, but the same in some 1814 02:30:44.760 --> 02:30:53.079 federal way, equal representation. In some way. They could have 1815 02:30:53.159 --> 02:30:56.079 been different from each other, they could have developed differently, 1816 02:30:56.520 --> 02:31:00.200 but at some point they became more alike. In this 1817 02:31:00.360 --> 02:31:08.079 upset people on both sides. Northern Ners wanted. They wanted 1818 02:31:08.280 --> 02:31:14.360 common values on things like slavery. They eventually coalesced about 1819 02:31:14.399 --> 02:31:18.719 that and said we want to abolish slavery, and they 1820 02:31:18.719 --> 02:31:21.760 didn't want to allow for diversity on that opinion. It's 1821 02:31:21.840 --> 02:31:24.879 not something that one can compromise on. You either have 1822 02:31:25.000 --> 02:31:31.200 slavery or you don't. There's no middle way. The Republican 1823 02:31:31.239 --> 02:31:36.600 Party initially ran against what they said in their platform, 1824 02:31:37.040 --> 02:31:44.040 those two relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy. They actually 1825 02:31:44.120 --> 02:31:48.479 ran against Mormon polygamy. They wanted to outlaw Mormon polygamy 1826 02:31:48.639 --> 02:31:53.479 as well as slavery. They weren't going to let the 1827 02:31:53.520 --> 02:31:56.399 Mormons be different out in Utah. The Mormons had to 1828 02:31:56.399 --> 02:32:00.840 be made the same. This is what Lincoln said. He 1829 02:32:00.959 --> 02:32:07.280 said that this country cannot remain half slave and half free. 1830 02:32:07.319 --> 02:32:10.319 It must become all one thing or all the other. 1831 02:32:11.719 --> 02:32:18.840 And that's a nationalist sort of idea. And Southerners, or 1832 02:32:18.879 --> 02:32:24.479 at least Southern jurists, were responsible for the dread Scott decision, 1833 02:32:25.959 --> 02:32:32.319 which Northerners feared would destroy all prohibitions on slavery in 1834 02:32:32.360 --> 02:32:39.000 the North. The dread Scott decision destroyed the Missouri Compromise, 1835 02:32:39.200 --> 02:32:43.159 which divided the sections into slaveholding and non slaveholding states, 1836 02:32:44.799 --> 02:32:49.120 and that was kind of a broken compromise in a 1837 02:32:49.159 --> 02:32:54.000 broken protection that the Northerners thought was was protecting them 1838 02:32:54.040 --> 02:33:01.399 from the expansion of slavery. So in one sense, you 1839 02:33:01.399 --> 02:33:05.520 could say both both Southerners and Northerners had gotten to 1840 02:33:05.559 --> 02:33:10.440 a point where they were uncomfortable in a union that 1841 02:33:12.600 --> 02:33:17.159 would have those things in common. They became points on 1842 02:33:17.239 --> 02:33:23.680 which no one was comfortable and agreeing to permit those things. 1843 02:33:25.879 --> 02:33:29.719 All right, I think, George, we're kind of reaching the 1844 02:33:29.799 --> 02:33:31.959 end of end of my endurance. At least you've been 1845 02:33:32.000 --> 02:33:34.200 here for two and a half hours, which is quite 1846 02:33:34.239 --> 02:33:36.360 long for my show. So do you mind if I 1847 02:33:36.399 --> 02:33:38.360 move on to super chats and if you guys want 1848 02:33:38.360 --> 02:33:40.840 to send anything else. We were happy to answer questions, 1849 02:33:40.920 --> 02:33:45.680 but we've got a couple Luth Templar, who I had 1850 02:33:45.719 --> 02:33:49.520 on just last night on the call in show. Shakers 1851 02:33:49.520 --> 02:33:52.680 basically went extinct because they take a vow of celibacy, 1852 02:33:52.760 --> 02:33:55.799 and well, if you don't breed, you die. Nice furniture, 1853 02:33:55.879 --> 02:33:58.319 but Shakers do not equal Quakers. Yes, I think we 1854 02:33:58.360 --> 02:33:59.840 covered that. He was probably just a little bit ahead 1855 02:33:59.840 --> 02:34:03.159 of a there, and then a little bit later he said, 1856 02:34:03.200 --> 02:34:06.079 it's true what they said progressives were born as a 1857 02:34:06.079 --> 02:34:08.680 Puritan cult. Yeah, it's interesting. 1858 02:34:08.760 --> 02:34:08.959 Right. 1859 02:34:09.239 --> 02:34:13.120 This is kind of one of Jarvin's you know, premiere observations, 1860 02:34:13.920 --> 02:34:16.280 you know, where he says that, and this is again 1861 02:34:16.319 --> 02:34:18.719 when he says about you know kind of and I 1862 02:34:18.719 --> 02:34:20.559 can't remember the exact name of the essay. I think 1863 02:34:20.600 --> 02:34:25.440 it's part of open letter where he essentially talks about 1864 02:34:25.959 --> 02:34:29.040 Quaker America, you know, and how this kind of like 1865 02:34:29.120 --> 02:34:35.079 progressivism is essentially like an extended version of of Quaker theology. 1866 02:34:35.840 --> 02:34:38.840 So obviously you can head to you know, his which 1867 02:34:38.879 --> 02:34:40.879 I think Skeptical Waves has an audio version of you 1868 02:34:40.879 --> 02:34:44.159 can find it anywhere. But he goes into quite he 1869 02:34:44.159 --> 02:34:46.639 goes into a lot of depth from his perspective on 1870 02:34:47.239 --> 02:34:50.840 why he used progressivism. It's essentially like a Protestant heresy. 1871 02:34:51.280 --> 02:34:53.360 But I think that's pretty much you know, foundational reading 1872 02:34:53.399 --> 02:34:57.719 for our spheres. And then Machiavelli sucks to go just 1873 02:34:58.040 --> 02:35:00.120 donated and said good show, thank you, I'm glad you 1874 02:35:00.200 --> 02:35:02.319 enjoyed it. And then this is I think crnch Walker 1875 02:35:02.440 --> 02:35:06.319 lu Templar again talking about you know, when we were 1876 02:35:06.479 --> 02:35:09.360 talking about the Mormons. A little known, but there is 1877 02:35:09.399 --> 02:35:12.360 some mention of ruins with supposed Hebrew inscription from the 1878 02:35:12.399 --> 02:35:15.440 seventeen hundreds. Smith wasn't the first one to claim finding 1879 02:35:15.479 --> 02:35:19.360 strange artifacts in that area. 1880 02:35:19.559 --> 02:35:27.799 Yes, indeed, I understand Mormons are particularly interested in pre 1881 02:35:27.920 --> 02:35:34.280 Columbian America for obvious reasons, and Mormon students and scholars 1882 02:35:34.440 --> 02:35:37.399 are known for going to Central America. 1883 02:35:37.200 --> 02:35:42.879 And going into the Aztec ruins and things like that 1884 02:35:43.040 --> 02:35:47.600 looking for any sort of symbolism that they can relate 1885 02:35:47.959 --> 02:35:50.360 to Jewish civilization. 1886 02:35:52.600 --> 02:35:58.680 To my knowledge, the claims that Mormons have made about 1887 02:35:58.760 --> 02:36:03.239 such connections are debatable at best. 1888 02:36:05.680 --> 02:36:09.159 Yeah, it's interesting. There's actually a whole there's a whole 1889 02:36:09.239 --> 02:36:14.040 genre of essentially like Mormon speculative fiction, you know, kind 1890 02:36:14.079 --> 02:36:16.440 of like as a Mormon version of the Left Behind series, 1891 02:36:16.440 --> 02:36:19.159 if you will, but all about these kind of like 1892 02:36:19.239 --> 02:36:23.520 pre Colombian civilizations. And it's interesting that much like kind 1893 02:36:23.559 --> 02:36:26.520 of you know, Evangelical Protestants have kind of like crowd 1894 02:36:26.559 --> 02:36:29.799 funded their own movies, there's like a subgenre of essentially 1895 02:36:29.840 --> 02:36:33.000 like Mormon fiction movies, you know, and then none of 1896 02:36:33.040 --> 02:36:35.600 them are particularly good, but they are they are out there, 1897 02:36:35.600 --> 02:36:39.000 and it's interesting because I obviously just didn't. There aren't 1898 02:36:39.120 --> 02:36:42.000 very many Mormons in the American South, you know. I 1899 02:36:42.000 --> 02:36:44.680 think it was famously was it Arkansas or Oklahoma where 1900 02:36:44.719 --> 02:36:48.000 it was technically still legal to kill Mormons until the seventies. 1901 02:36:49.920 --> 02:36:55.319 Turnip Seed knows all about that. I love our turnip Seed. 1902 02:36:55.959 --> 02:36:58.600 He's the one I've been truly impressed with how much 1903 02:36:58.600 --> 02:37:01.040 of a ruckus he's been able to cull and the uh. 1904 02:37:01.639 --> 02:37:07.040 Oh, I'm so proud of him. He deserves Champagne toasts. 1905 02:37:07.799 --> 02:37:10.520 Bravo for turnip Seed. 1906 02:37:10.840 --> 02:37:13.360 Well, anyway, I don't see any more more questions coming in, George. 1907 02:37:13.360 --> 02:37:14.959 Is there anything else you want to you want to 1908 02:37:14.959 --> 02:37:16.600 bring up to kind of bring this to a close. 1909 02:37:17.799 --> 02:37:21.840 Yeah, I thought of something with your last remark. I 1910 02:37:22.000 --> 02:37:27.000 was thinking about Mormon art and Mormon artists. It's a 1911 02:37:27.040 --> 02:37:32.639 really interesting subject. They they have, They do have some 1912 02:37:32.760 --> 02:37:37.840 interesting writers associated with them. Orson Scott Card is one 1913 02:37:38.520 --> 02:37:42.239 the science fiction author. He is a Mormon, and I 1914 02:37:42.319 --> 02:37:47.719 think he lives in North Carolina, of all places. I 1915 02:37:47.959 --> 02:37:51.959 think Skeptical Waves actually published something by Orson Scott Card 1916 02:37:52.600 --> 02:37:59.440 about about modern religious sensibilities. I'm trying to remember just 1917 02:37:59.440 --> 02:38:00.799 what it was, but I think so. 1918 02:38:01.040 --> 02:38:05.360 He also did one on h He also did a 1919 02:38:05.360 --> 02:38:09.920 good Orson Scott Card piece on fiction writing. I can't 1920 02:38:09.920 --> 02:38:11.879 remember exactly what it was, but yeah, I do remember 1921 02:38:11.920 --> 02:38:14.360 that Skeptical Waves has a series. I think they must 1922 02:38:14.399 --> 02:38:18.000 have published some collection of his essays and so you 1923 02:38:18.040 --> 02:38:20.879 can listen to him talk about religion and one and 1924 02:38:20.920 --> 02:38:25.440 then oh, I think it was specifically it was about like, uh, 1925 02:38:26.399 --> 02:38:30.079 like inappropriate content in fiction and how people kind of 1926 02:38:30.200 --> 02:38:33.520 use like sex and violence as a crutch. But that's 1927 02:38:33.559 --> 02:38:35.159 neither here nor there. So that he has at least 1928 02:38:35.200 --> 02:38:37.760 several essays by Orson Scott Card on his channel. 1929 02:38:37.760 --> 02:38:42.079 But anyway, you were saying, I'm interested in Orson Scott Card. 1930 02:38:42.319 --> 02:38:44.200 I don't claim that I know much about him, but 1931 02:38:44.239 --> 02:38:48.799 I know he teaches creative writing, for instance, and I 1932 02:38:48.799 --> 02:38:54.399 think he has interesting things to say. I'm I'm sympathetic. 1933 02:38:57.079 --> 02:39:00.639 I've mentioned before I'm a little sympathetic with the more Romans. 1934 02:39:01.280 --> 02:39:05.559 I suppose the our situation living in the Ashes has 1935 02:39:05.639 --> 02:39:13.239 created strange bedfellows. I like seeing people who are able 1936 02:39:13.319 --> 02:39:21.719 to believe things in this environment. Being a member, I'm sorry, 1937 02:39:22.200 --> 02:39:27.559 is it, and believe them confidently? Yes, actually actually live 1938 02:39:27.639 --> 02:39:34.040 their lives, going against the flow and having a having 1939 02:39:34.120 --> 02:39:39.879 a heritage that is despised and mocked, and yet holding 1940 02:39:39.879 --> 02:39:45.360 their heads up high. I admire that that is manly, 1941 02:39:46.000 --> 02:39:52.680 That is good, and it it takes that sort of 1942 02:39:53.280 --> 02:39:58.479 behavior to survive what we undergo today. We need to 1943 02:39:58.520 --> 02:40:02.680 cultivate those virtues in our And I'm I'm a member 1944 02:40:02.719 --> 02:40:06.120 of very small, an obscure group in America. There are 1945 02:40:06.239 --> 02:40:12.079 very many Eastern Orthodox Christians in America, but I I 1946 02:40:12.120 --> 02:40:14.440 have something to learn from these groups who are who 1947 02:40:14.440 --> 02:40:18.239 are also you know, dismissed or discarded. 1948 02:40:20.559 --> 02:40:22.559 And there's also something to be learned from the fact 1949 02:40:22.600 --> 02:40:27.920 of like the Mormons especially know how to act as 1950 02:40:27.959 --> 02:40:30.959 a minority, you know, and they've done very well for themselves, 1951 02:40:31.040 --> 02:40:33.639 you know, in their own area and also just in government. 1952 02:40:34.159 --> 02:40:36.280 And I, you know, without being too explicit about that, 1953 02:40:36.319 --> 02:40:37.920 I think that's a skill we ought to learn. 1954 02:40:39.200 --> 02:40:44.159 Yes, they built their own parallel institutions, for instance, and 1955 02:40:44.200 --> 02:40:47.760 that is that is a really interesting example. Now I 1956 02:40:47.799 --> 02:40:50.959 have I have friends who are ex Mormons, and I 1957 02:40:51.079 --> 02:40:54.159 like talking to them about it. They converted to Orthodoxy, 1958 02:40:54.239 --> 02:41:00.360 strangely enough, but by way of neopaganism, and they tell 1959 02:41:00.399 --> 02:41:04.959 me that Mormon institutions are going just as woke as 1960 02:41:05.319 --> 02:41:10.440 as other institutions in our society, which I lament. I 1961 02:41:10.799 --> 02:41:16.239 would much rather them, I don't know, do do their 1962 02:41:16.360 --> 02:41:19.120 own traditional thing, whatever that is. I don't claim to 1963 02:41:19.159 --> 02:41:21.639 know what it is. But well, right, why should they 1964 02:41:21.719 --> 02:41:24.840 be like everybody else? Why should Why should Brigham Young 1965 02:41:25.000 --> 02:41:30.120 University be like any state university. It shouldn't. And it's 1966 02:41:30.200 --> 02:41:34.799 tragic that it's not. They should do Brigham Young stuff 1967 02:41:34.840 --> 02:41:35.559 whatever that is. 1968 02:41:36.399 --> 02:41:39.440 Well, exactly, And it's it's interesting because if you pay 1969 02:41:39.440 --> 02:41:42.719 attention to these, you see the kind of like guns 1970 02:41:42.760 --> 02:41:46.000 of progressive media turned on the Mormons. You know, there's 1971 02:41:46.040 --> 02:41:49.360 alway these like expos A's quote unquote like, oh, do 1972 02:41:49.399 --> 02:41:52.120 you know that at Brigham Young University a lot of 1973 02:41:52.159 --> 02:41:55.319 people get married when they're young, right out of college. 1974 02:41:55.879 --> 02:41:58.799 They're expected to start families. Isn't it awful? All of 1975 02:41:58.799 --> 02:42:04.680 these people getting married? And again you're like, well, look, 1976 02:42:04.680 --> 02:42:06.760 I don't agree with Mormon theology at all. You know, 1977 02:42:06.799 --> 02:42:09.879 We've said that, But I'm beginning to think that the 1978 02:42:09.920 --> 02:42:12.399 reason they're so despised has absolutely nothing to do with 1979 02:42:12.440 --> 02:42:14.319 theology and has a whole lot to do with the 1980 02:42:14.319 --> 02:42:17.600 fact that they're not progressive clients. 1981 02:42:18.159 --> 02:42:22.159 That's right, at least at least the ones that believe 1982 02:42:22.280 --> 02:42:27.920 the teachings of their sect that they are in that camp. 1983 02:42:29.319 --> 02:42:32.239 So we had another question come in from from John Carter, 1984 02:42:32.360 --> 02:42:34.879 who I will say has been saying very very funny 1985 02:42:34.879 --> 02:42:36.840 things in the live chat, and I know it's been 1986 02:42:36.840 --> 02:42:38.799 a serious dream So I've not been highlighting them, but 1987 02:42:38.840 --> 02:42:41.200 I did notice them, and I laughed at them. But 1988 02:42:41.479 --> 02:42:43.799 he says, someday, I'd love to hear Bagbee talk about 1989 02:42:43.799 --> 02:42:47.440 the Anabaptists in America as well as the Amana colonies, 1990 02:42:47.479 --> 02:42:48.639 if he has any experience. 1991 02:42:50.360 --> 02:42:55.399 I know very little about the Amana group. I know 1992 02:42:55.479 --> 02:42:59.719 they're in Iowa. I know that they were a secular 1993 02:43:00.479 --> 02:43:03.719 at least if I'm remembering it correctly. I do have 1994 02:43:03.799 --> 02:43:07.520 a book on my shelf about them. Let me take 1995 02:43:07.520 --> 02:43:09.319 a look here, because I know right where it is. 1996 02:43:11.040 --> 02:43:20.879 Nord Off Community or the Communistic Societies of the United States, 1997 02:43:21.000 --> 02:43:25.120 Charles Nordoff, and uh, I've got it on my shelf here, 1998 02:43:25.159 --> 02:43:27.920 but I have not read his chapter on Amana, but 1999 02:43:28.319 --> 02:43:34.399 he would be the contemporary authority on the community. I 2000 02:43:34.440 --> 02:43:38.440 am very interested in Baptist groups. I was actually talking 2001 02:43:38.520 --> 02:43:44.959 this afternoon about Baptist groups, and I would like to 2002 02:43:45.000 --> 02:43:49.399 do more more reading on the subject. There seem to 2003 02:43:49.399 --> 02:43:54.639 be two interesting camps in the Baptists. There's Landmarkers. Landmarkers 2004 02:43:54.719 --> 02:43:59.120 believe that all of Christian history, as as known by 2005 02:43:59.239 --> 02:44:03.000 every every one else in Christianity, is more or less 2006 02:44:03.000 --> 02:44:10.120 a conspiracy to libel Baptist groups. So landmark Baptists say 2007 02:44:10.280 --> 02:44:18.760 that the the Gnostics, the Albigensians, the Cathars, the Nestorians, 2008 02:44:19.479 --> 02:44:26.399 the Aryans were all Baptists and they were being libeled 2009 02:44:26.559 --> 02:44:32.680 and accused of complete falsehoods by the official Church, and 2010 02:44:32.719 --> 02:44:37.319 that Baptists are actually the Apostolic Church in hiding through 2011 02:44:37.440 --> 02:44:42.559 all of the history. Now, they don't actually have any 2012 02:44:42.799 --> 02:44:47.000 documents for this at all. It is basically a conspiratorial 2013 02:44:48.079 --> 02:44:54.639 view that the Baptists are the Apostolic Church, and you 2014 02:44:54.719 --> 02:44:57.520 have to give them courage for making that argument, at least. 2015 02:44:57.600 --> 02:45:03.520 I mean, they believe apostol roots are absolutely necessary for legitimacy, 2016 02:45:03.559 --> 02:45:06.680 and so do I. So I give them that. 2017 02:45:08.120 --> 02:45:11.000 Well, well, you have to, and this is with any religion. 2018 02:45:11.000 --> 02:45:12.719 There's a certain point where you do have to just 2019 02:45:12.840 --> 02:45:14.520 like admire the goal. 2020 02:45:14.280 --> 02:45:17.760 Of it yes, this isn't. 2021 02:45:19.239 --> 02:45:20.799 You know, This isn't like, oh, we have a minor 2022 02:45:20.840 --> 02:45:22.879 disagreement about the Council of Trent or something. 2023 02:45:22.920 --> 02:45:23.280 It's like that. 2024 02:45:23.319 --> 02:45:25.000 It's like no, no, no, everything is one hundred and 2025 02:45:25.040 --> 02:45:27.000 eighty degrees flipped, just completely wrong. 2026 02:45:27.799 --> 02:45:34.239 Right. Well, I understand. I understand the more more mainstream Baptists, 2027 02:45:34.280 --> 02:45:37.840 like most Baptists are not Landmarkers, but more mainstream Baptists 2028 02:45:38.200 --> 02:45:43.000 would relate themselves back to Zwingli and the Anabaptist Reformers 2029 02:45:43.600 --> 02:45:48.840 in some way. So that would be like the opinion 2030 02:45:48.879 --> 02:45:52.479 that the Baptists are actually part of the Reformation, that 2031 02:45:52.719 --> 02:45:55.799 is their genesis, that is where they came from. The 2032 02:45:55.920 --> 02:46:03.360 landmarkers deny that stringently. And I encounter landmarkers very frequently, 2033 02:46:03.639 --> 02:46:06.639 and I care very much about these people, so I 2034 02:46:07.000 --> 02:46:12.639 want to take their position seriously. But outside of a 2035 02:46:12.680 --> 02:46:18.440 few very short tracks with no footnotes, I can't get 2036 02:46:18.559 --> 02:46:21.360 much information about their beliefs and where they came from. 2037 02:46:21.399 --> 02:46:24.680 So I really want to get more information about them, 2038 02:46:24.719 --> 02:46:28.239 and I need a big library to do that. I guess. 2039 02:46:28.920 --> 02:46:32.000 Well, that's a very very well thought out answer. It's interesting. 2040 02:46:32.079 --> 02:46:34.360 I have a and I won't say his name until 2041 02:46:34.360 --> 02:46:37.200 I confirm him on the show, but a mutual friend 2042 02:46:37.200 --> 02:46:42.719 of ours, Bagbee, who's an expert on both Southern American 2043 02:46:42.799 --> 02:46:47.159 history and also Southern Christian American history, and I've been 2044 02:46:47.159 --> 02:46:49.239 trying to get him on to talk about the history 2045 02:46:49.360 --> 02:46:54.079 of Presbyterianism across the across the US, which is also 2046 02:46:54.159 --> 02:46:57.760 quite interesting because a lot of this, you know, it 2047 02:46:57.840 --> 02:47:00.079 is on one hand, people always say like, oh, like 2048 02:47:00.200 --> 02:47:02.959 you know, Broadest in particular are always fracturing, which is 2049 02:47:02.959 --> 02:47:09.079 partially true. But there are kind of four main traditions, uh, 2050 02:47:09.120 --> 02:47:12.000 and these these branches much like you and they're not 2051 02:47:12.079 --> 02:47:15.760 completely correlated with the you know, with the four or 2052 02:47:15.760 --> 02:47:19.920 five groups from a from Albion seed that they're quite close, 2053 02:47:20.840 --> 02:47:23.600 and so the history of these groups can kind of 2054 02:47:23.680 --> 02:47:27.440 provide a second level of information when you look at 2055 02:47:27.479 --> 02:47:28.719 American history. 2056 02:47:28.920 --> 02:47:29.159 You know. 2057 02:47:29.399 --> 02:47:32.920 And similarly to how to how Thomas talks about kind 2058 02:47:32.920 --> 02:47:36.319 of like the ethnic component of American politics, you know, 2059 02:47:36.360 --> 02:47:40.520 which is often led out let out Similarly, you you 2060 02:47:40.680 --> 02:47:44.079 kind of you lose a dimension, you know, if you're 2061 02:47:44.159 --> 02:47:46.399 if you're not seeing kind of like the religious and 2062 02:47:46.399 --> 02:47:49.959 cultural aspect of these kind of like uh, I guess 2063 02:47:50.040 --> 02:47:53.040 like American conflicts. 2064 02:47:53.319 --> 02:48:01.440 Absolutely and there is strong correspondence from these these Anglo 2065 02:48:01.559 --> 02:48:06.600 groups that settled colonies on the seaboard of the United 2066 02:48:06.639 --> 02:48:12.159 States and their religious traditions and how those traditions evolve 2067 02:48:12.479 --> 02:48:18.559 and where they go, and the political priorities that go 2068 02:48:18.680 --> 02:48:24.319 with those traditions. Religion and politics have a lot of 2069 02:48:24.360 --> 02:48:28.920 correspondence with one another. What people believe about God and 2070 02:48:29.040 --> 02:48:33.040 the nature of man and the story of evil and 2071 02:48:33.360 --> 02:48:37.159 redemption has an awful lot to do with what they 2072 02:48:37.200 --> 02:48:40.719 will believe about politics and what should go on as 2073 02:48:40.760 --> 02:48:47.559 far as justice. And if we remember the map that 2074 02:48:48.159 --> 02:48:51.120 we looked at with the Second Great Awakening where the 2075 02:48:51.200 --> 02:48:55.920 reformist activity took place and where it's spread, you would 2076 02:48:55.920 --> 02:49:00.479 notice the area that was highlighted on this app goes 2077 02:49:00.520 --> 02:49:06.239 from Massachusetts across western New York, across practically all of Ohio, 2078 02:49:07.719 --> 02:49:13.680 and into Indiana in part. And this area was almost 2079 02:49:13.840 --> 02:49:18.040 entirely settled by people from New England. And though we've 2080 02:49:18.040 --> 02:49:21.360 talked about the influence of Quakers and kind of their outsides, 2081 02:49:22.719 --> 02:49:29.319 their outsized role in American religion and thought and posture, 2082 02:49:29.479 --> 02:49:32.680 we see the Second Great Awakening has an awful lot 2083 02:49:32.719 --> 02:49:36.920 to do with that Puritan heritage. I like to point 2084 02:49:36.920 --> 02:49:43.159 out where these people were from. In my overview, we 2085 02:49:43.280 --> 02:49:46.200 have lots of New Englanders and then people from Western 2086 02:49:46.239 --> 02:49:48.559 New York and Western New York kind of served as 2087 02:49:48.600 --> 02:49:54.399 the frontier for those isolated, landlocked New England states that 2088 02:49:54.760 --> 02:50:00.159 cannot expand westward. Those people went into western New York 2089 02:50:00.559 --> 02:50:03.760 before they went off to places like Ohio. Part of 2090 02:50:03.760 --> 02:50:08.479 Ohio is actually given to Connecticut so that their children 2091 02:50:08.520 --> 02:50:10.600 would have a place to go and settle and they 2092 02:50:10.600 --> 02:50:13.600 didn't have to divide the farms back in tiny little 2093 02:50:13.600 --> 02:50:19.280 Connecticut further and further impoverishing future generations. They sent some 2094 02:50:19.319 --> 02:50:24.040 of their people out west to northern Ohio, so that 2095 02:50:24.200 --> 02:50:29.479 area had a Puritan culture. And it was the descendants 2096 02:50:29.479 --> 02:50:34.600 of those people that joined the Mormon Church and went 2097 02:50:34.639 --> 02:50:42.680 west became Millerites and Seventh day Adventists. These traditions correspond 2098 02:50:42.760 --> 02:50:46.479 with one another. There is a reason why Southerners did 2099 02:50:46.479 --> 02:50:51.959 not go off and become Christian scientists, Why Virginia cavaliers 2100 02:50:52.360 --> 02:50:58.079 were not interested in this utopian city on a hill 2101 02:50:58.239 --> 02:51:02.680 project down in Virginia. Did not join these things, did 2102 02:51:02.719 --> 02:51:07.760 not build communes. It wasn't part of their heritage. They 2103 02:51:07.760 --> 02:51:11.559 didn't think of religion that way. They had a more 2104 02:51:11.600 --> 02:51:16.239 traditional Christian mindset, and they knew that the Kingdom of 2105 02:51:16.280 --> 02:51:22.360 Heaven is not of this world. They did not sign 2106 02:51:22.399 --> 02:51:29.440 up for utopian projects. They didn't go in for chileasm. 2107 02:51:30.200 --> 02:51:34.639 And this is the legacy of what we call Bible 2108 02:51:34.760 --> 02:51:39.840 Belt Christianity in America. It's an older kind of Christian belief. 2109 02:51:40.399 --> 02:51:44.520 It's a different kind of Christian belief. Whereas these areas 2110 02:51:44.520 --> 02:51:48.040 were describing are now the most irreligious areas of the 2111 02:51:48.120 --> 02:51:52.600 United States. Massachusetts has the lowest level of church attendance 2112 02:51:52.639 --> 02:51:56.920 in the United States today, and yet it was this 2113 02:51:57.000 --> 02:52:02.479 hotbed of political or in religious vation in in our history. 2114 02:52:03.520 --> 02:52:07.239 It's burned out that the area is still a burned 2115 02:52:07.280 --> 02:52:13.760 over district Sadly, I think religion has a role in 2116 02:52:13.799 --> 02:52:16.159 our lives, should have a role in our lives. We 2117 02:52:16.159 --> 02:52:18.440 we ought to treat these things seriously. It's not just 2118 02:52:18.479 --> 02:52:19.760 a bunch of made up stuff. 2119 02:52:22.360 --> 02:52:25.959 Well, I I think that's an interesting point. I hope 2120 02:52:25.959 --> 02:52:29.000 you guys at home can see how I ended up 2121 02:52:29.040 --> 02:52:29.559 how I did. 2122 02:52:30.360 --> 02:52:30.559 Right. 2123 02:52:30.840 --> 02:52:33.200 You know that that a couple hours of George Bagby 2124 02:52:33.280 --> 02:52:38.959 a day and you'll end up a staunch reactionary. So again, 2125 02:52:39.000 --> 02:52:41.280 I I thank you so much for coming on. This 2126 02:52:41.319 --> 02:52:44.040 is you know, obviously a lecture that I was very 2127 02:52:44.040 --> 02:52:47.079 impactful on me and very interesting, and I hope we can, 2128 02:52:47.280 --> 02:52:49.719 you know, we can have you on again. I know 2129 02:52:49.799 --> 02:52:52.600 that you're you know, you're working on potentially you know, 2130 02:52:52.639 --> 02:52:55.639 having a course through the Academic Agency, which you know, 2131 02:52:55.760 --> 02:52:58.440 I think that will be really really interesting, you know, 2132 02:52:58.440 --> 02:52:59.959 if it's based off of kind of fear. 2133 02:53:00.079 --> 02:53:02.079 Uh, the work that you've shown. 2134 02:53:01.840 --> 02:53:03.639 Here is there is there anything you want to you know, 2135 02:53:03.760 --> 02:53:06.479 shill and direct people towards in the meantime before that 2136 02:53:06.479 --> 02:53:06.920 comes out. 2137 02:53:08.159 --> 02:53:13.239 Yes, I have a little presence on YouTube and I 2138 02:53:13.280 --> 02:53:18.600 want to do more there. It's it's just me reading literature. 2139 02:53:18.840 --> 02:53:23.120 That's all that it is. It might be something else someday, 2140 02:53:23.399 --> 02:53:27.959 but it's George Bagbee on YouTube. And also I have 2141 02:53:28.000 --> 02:53:33.200 a Telegram channel. I call it Bagbe's Corner. It's just small, 2142 02:53:33.319 --> 02:53:37.120 modest right now, but eventually I want to I want 2143 02:53:37.159 --> 02:53:42.959 to share like good quotes that that I've collected. I know, 2144 02:53:43.079 --> 02:53:50.600 I'm I'm sharing photographs that I've taken on travels and observations. 2145 02:53:51.000 --> 02:53:54.639 It's nothing, nothing very serious. You're organized, but if you 2146 02:53:54.680 --> 02:53:57.079 want to follow my work, those are places that you 2147 02:53:57.120 --> 02:54:00.639 can find me for now, and I'll I'll be back 2148 02:54:00.719 --> 02:54:03.159 on the Ja Burdens Show. I don't know how often, 2149 02:54:03.239 --> 02:54:04.920 but come back. 2150 02:54:05.440 --> 02:54:08.559 As often as we can manage it, I guess. But anyway, guys, 2151 02:54:08.719 --> 02:54:10.760 as far as my stuff, you know, you know where 2152 02:54:10.799 --> 02:54:13.280 to find me. The show is available on YouTube. It's 2153 02:54:13.360 --> 02:54:17.200 also available as an audio only show on Apple, Spotify, 2154 02:54:17.360 --> 02:54:20.360 you know, anywhere you listen to audio podcasts. In addition, 2155 02:54:20.479 --> 02:54:23.600 I have very recently started an Odyssey channel. Odyssey is 2156 02:54:23.639 --> 02:54:26.319 an alternative to YouTube that I'll be honest, I actually 2157 02:54:26.360 --> 02:54:29.040 prefer to YouTube. It's a better system, it's a better 2158 02:54:29.079 --> 02:54:33.159 app It is you know, much less advertising, and it's 2159 02:54:33.319 --> 02:54:36.239 completely you can say whatever you want there, right, and 2160 02:54:36.280 --> 02:54:38.360 so all my stuff is backed up there. I'm kind 2161 02:54:38.360 --> 02:54:41.920 of getting a feeling that our days are numbered here 2162 02:54:42.159 --> 02:54:43.920 and so I'm trying to push people over to the 2163 02:54:43.920 --> 02:54:46.319 audio show and over to Odyssey, where we have a 2164 02:54:46.360 --> 02:54:49.319 little bit more lateral freedom, so to speak. And if 2165 02:54:49.360 --> 02:54:51.520 you guys want to support the show, I don't require it, 2166 02:54:51.559 --> 02:54:53.200 but I do appreciate it. You know, there are different 2167 02:54:53.200 --> 02:54:55.000 ways you can do that. Down in the description, I 2168 02:54:55.040 --> 02:54:59.079 basically will take anything and again, guys, thank you so 2169 02:54:59.120 --> 02:55:01.879 much for coming out, and remember keep your head up. 2170 02:55:02.000 --> 02:55:03.079 The lie can't last forever. 2171 02:55:03.239 --> 02:55:03.639 Good Night,