A Few Notes on Joseph Priestley
Jonathan Rowe on Feb 19th 2008 10:43 pm |
Joseph Priestley, the British Divine and co-discoverer of oxygen, greatly influenced America’s key Founders. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin credited him as something of a spiritual mentor. And he likely influenced many other Founders as well. Eric Alan Isaacson sent along the following note (which he left in this comment earlier) on his influence:
“It was a source of great satisfaction to him, and what he had little previous reason to expect, that his lectures were attended by very crowded audiences, including most of the members of the Congress of the United States at that time assembled at Philadelphia, and of the executive offices of the government of the United States.”
– Joseph Priestley, Jr., A Continuation of the Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley (Written by his Son Joseph Priestley), in John T. Boyer, ed., The Memoirs of Joseph Priestley, at 144 (Washington, D.C.: Barcroft Press, 1964).
Priestley was the preeminent expositor of rationalist unitarianism. His unitarianism was not well received by the masses; he was sort of an Abbie Hoffman type of his age — popular in certain influential circles only, but whose ideas were too controversial for mass appeal. Indeed, in England, a mob burned down Priestley’s home over his controversial ideas, after which he fled to America for refuge. That Priestley’s religious system presented itself under the auspices of “Christianity,” I think, probably made it somewhat easier to sell to the many elite figures who followed him than if it rejected the Christian label and termed itself “Deism” or something of the like.
However, whether his beliefs should be understood as “Christian” at all is debatable. (Again, Mormonism is the proper analogy. Someone who doesn’t think Mormonism merits the label “Christian,” probably likewise wouldn’t think Priestley’s “Unitarian Christianity” merits the label either. One could cite Lincoln who once noted calling a dog’s tail a 5th leg doesn’t make it so.) It rejected, among other things, original sin, the trinity, incarnation, atonement, and plenary inspiration of scripture as “corruptions of Christianity.” Only the rational parts of scripture — those that passed the “reason” smell test — were legitimately revealed. Surprisingly, Priestley accepted some miracles recorded in the Bible — the “rational” ones.
Priestley did believe in the Resurrection of Jesus whom he regarded as fully human, albiet perfect and on a divine mission (hence Priestley was Socinian). As such Priestley rejected that Jesus Christ as God made an infinite Atonement for the sins of man, but regarded the Resurrection as the action of a benevolent God doing for the most perfect man what he one day will do for all men.
More importantly, Priestley regarded the Resurrection as rational. And all religious beliefs, including the miraculous, must meet the test of rationality in order to be true.
Priestley’s importance is his disproportionate influence on the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and who framed the Constitution of the United States. Understanding his influence is key to understanding the political theology of America’s Founding.
Filed in Uncategorized
Hi Jonathan,
I’m troubled by those who insist that only people who believe in one way can be “true Christians.” If Mormons consider themselves followers of Jesus, that’s good enough for me to regard them as Christians. If Trinitarian Evangelicals regard themselves as followers of Jesus, I’ll consider them Christians too — even though, so far as I can tell, Jesus never claimed to be God.
If someone like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Priestley honored Jesus and endeavored to follow his teachings, they should not be denied the name “Christian” merely because others who claim that name have embraced any number of extra-biblical doctrines.
I’ve heard Catholics occasionally say that theirs is the only “true church,” suggesting perhaps that Protestants are not truly Christians. I’ve heard Protestant preachers denounce the Pope as the Anti-Christ, insisting that Catholics can’t be true Christians because they follow the Pope rather than Christ.
I must confess, such attitudes offend my sensibilities.
And yet, I find you, an open-minded and liberal chap, adopting the same stance, and suggesting that Unitarians and Mormons can’t be Christians.
I am reminded, quite frankly, of how New Hampshire’s Supreme Court ruled in 1868 the Dover, New Hampshire, First Unitarian Society of Christians’ chosen minister — the Rev. Francis Ellingwood Abbot — was insufficiently “Christian” to serve the Congregation that had called him. Justice Jonathan Everett Sargent’s opinion for the court quoted passages from Abbot’s sermons, to show that the minister was too open-minded to serve his congregation.
The Rev. Abbot, after all, had once preached:
In another sermon, Rev. Abbot even declared:
“If Protestantism would include Mr. Abbot in this case,” Justice Sargent opined for New Hampshire’s highest court, “it would of course include Thomas Jefferson, and by the same rule also Thomas Paine, whom Gov. Plumer of New Hampshire called ‘that outrageous blasphemer,’ that ‘infamous blasphemer,’ ‘that miscreant Paine,’ whose ‘Age of Reason’ Plumer had read ‘with unqualified disapprobation of its tone and temper, its course vulgarity, and its unfair appeals to the passions and prejudices of his readers.’”
Hale v. Everett, 53 N.H. 9, 16 Am. Rep. 82, 1868 N.H. LEXIS 47 (1868). See Charles B. Kinney, Jr., Church & State: The Struggle for Separation in New Hampshire, 1630-1900 113 (New York: Teachers College, Columbia Univ., 1955) (“One of the more celebrated cases in New Hampshire jurisprudence is that of Hale versus Everett.”); Carl H. Esbeck, Dissent and Disestablishment: The Church-State Settlement in the Early American Republic, 2004 B.Y.U. L. Rev. 1385, 1534 n.541 (“As late as 1868, the state supreme court decided that a Unitarian minister would not be allowed to use the town meeting house because of his heterodoxy, and in spite of being called and settled by a majority of the community.”).
You might suppose that being run out of the pulpit would sour the Rev. Abbot in his attitudes toward those who thought themselves more orthodox than he was. You would be wrong. Abbot went on to edit The Index, and on his retirement from that position in 1880 addressed those who gathered in his honor: “I know we are here Unitarians and Non-Unitarians, and I rejoice to stand with Christians, with Catholic and Protestant Christians alike, for justice and purity; and I will always do so. These things are more important than our little differences of theological opinion.” Farewell Dinner to Francis Ellingwood Abbot, on Retiring from the Editorship of “The Index” 14 (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1880) (remarks of Rev. Abbot, June 24, 1880).
It may be noted that Frederick Douglass praised Rev. Abbot for doing “much to break the fetters of religious superstition, for which he is entitled to gratitude.” Farewell Dinner, supra, at p. 48 (letter of June 15, 1880, from Frederick Douglass to the Rev. M.J. Savage).
I think it a tremendous mistake, Jonathan, for you to side with the likes of Justice Sargent, who think they are entitled to determine who can, and who cannot, be called a true “Christian.” In truth, Justice Sargent may have been somewhat more liberal in his attitudes than you are – for he and the New Hampshire Supreme Court at least accepted the notion that one can be a genuine Unitarian Christian, even as they ruled that Rev. Abbot was far too unorthodox even to preach in a Unitarian church.
Peace be with you!
Eric Alan Isaacson
[...] Eric Alan Isaacson leaves a very compelling comment on the proper definition of Christianity, one with which I admittidly struggle. Though not an atheist, I don’t consider myself a “Christian,” (even though I am Catholic by baptism) but have noted were I to join a Church it would probably be the Quakers, Unitarian-Universalists, or some kind of liberal Christian denomination like the Episcopalians (i.e., the ones that recognize same-sex marriages). His comment deals with what belief system merits the label “Christian,” and he argues for a broad, liberal understanding of the term. My understanding is fairly strict, but not as strict as some would have it. For instance, I don’t think one needs to be “born-again” to be a “real Christian”; nor do I think one needs to be a member of any particular Church, i.e., the Roman Catholic Church. [...]