Becoming Occult: Alienation and Orthodoxy Formation in American Spiritualism

by

Richard Kent Evans, B.A.

A Thesis

In

History

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Approved

Mark Stoll, PhD. Chair of Committee

Gretchen Adams, PhD.

Aliza Wong, PhD.

Dominick Casadonte Interim Dean of the Graduate School

August, 2013 Copyright 2013, Richard Kent Evans Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... iii

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. "YOU HAVE TAKEN AWAY MY SAVIOR:" THE ALIENATION OF CHRISTIAN

SPIRITUALISTS ...... 18

III. "MAY YOU BE IN HEAVEN JUST THREE WEEKS BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU

ARE DEAD: RADICALISM, NON-RESISTANCE, AND THE CHRISTIAN AMENDMENT ...... 46

IV. THE AESTHETICS OF EMERGENT SPIRITUALISM ...... 67

V. CONCLUSION ...... 85

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 88

i

i Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

ABSTRACT

“Becoming Occult” explores the evolving relationship between Spiritualism and the normative, dominant Protestant culture of the nineteenth century. The thesis uses the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists, held in 1867, as a case study for broader events in Modern Spiritualism. I argue that a faction of

Spiritualists, which I call the Spiritualist orthodoxy, finalized their takeover of the movement at this convention. Once firmly in control, this group began the process of alienating groups of people that formed antebellum Spiritualism. These groups include Christian Spiritualists, politically moderate Spiritualists, and anti- ecclesiastical Spiritualists. The thesis consists of three chapters, each devoted to the alienation of the aforementioned groups. More importantly, “Becoming Occult” is one of the first applications of a new theoretical approach to emergent religious traditions. Introduced by religious scholars J. Gordon Melton and David Bromley, this interpretive framework rethinks the church-sect-denomination-cult framework that has dominated scholarship on the historical study of religion. I believe this new methodological approach will fundamentally shape the ways in which historians approach religions. I also extend the Melton-Bromley thesis further by arguing that the evolving relationship between an emergent religious tradition (Spiritualism, in my case) and dominant social institutions is key to understanding how a movement becomes considered “occult” by normative culture.

i i

i Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

For me – unread in the occult, I’m fain To damn all mysteries alike as vain, Spurn the obscure and base my faith upon The Revelations of the good St. John

— Ambrose Bierce, Laus Lucis

Reverend Samuel Williams must have been anxious as he knocked on the door of one of his parishioners on a warm April night in 1851. He had been overhearing the hushed murmurs from his congregation for two years now. He knew they, like virtually all Americans, were fascinated by the astounding developments that had taken place in the last two years. It seemed that a new dispensation had begun. People could now communicate with ghosts. For whatever reason, the spirit world had decided to make itself known. Williams thought of himself as a learned man of science, and he owed it to himself, and to his Baptist congregation, to investigate the science behind spirit communication.1

The new dispensation had begun two years earlier when sisters Kate and

Maggie Fox caused quite a buzz in their hometown of Hydesville, New York, when they brought attention to the disembodied knocking sounds that had been keeping them awake at night. Their parents could find no explanation. Alarmingly, after several nights of continuous rapping, the girls began interacting with the sounds. It seems these were not the rappings of an animal – they were intelligent. The

1 J.B. Campbell, Pittsburgh and Allegheny Spirit Rappings, Together with a General History of Spiritual Communications throughout the United States (Allegheny: Purviance & Co., 1851), 65-66. 1 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 rappings responded to questions. The girls confided to a neighbor and soon, much of the population of Hydesville gathered in the Fox family home to witness the rappings for themselves. Investigators and debunkers can and went, unable to find a source of the mysterious noises. Over the next several weeks, Kate and Maggie Fox developed an alphabet system so that they could communicate with the spirit making the noises. They learned that the noises were being made by the spirit of a peddler who had been murdered years before. His body was buried underneath the cellar.2

With a murder mystery on their hands, the residents of Hydesville became even more intrigued with the developments taking place at the Fox home. Soon, reporters descended on the small farming village and dubbed the event the

Rochester Rappings. Reports of the Rochester Rappings filled the nation’s newspapers. Eliab Capron, who would go on to make a career out of investigating

Spiritualism, traveled to Hydesville in November of 1848 to investigate the rappings.3 Over the next year, Kate and Maggie Fox underwent often-humiliating scrutiny into the veracity of their claims. Capron was there every step of the way as men of “intelligence, candor and science” poked, prodded and groped the girls in an attempt to prove that the girls were making the noises. After a year, Capron published his report in the New York Times, concluding that the girls were not the source of the sounds. Capron was unsure whether the remarkable phenomenon that

2 For the most thorough study of the Rochester Rappings and the careers of Kate and Maggie Fox, see Barbara Weisberg, Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 1-29. 3 Weisberg, Talking to the Dead, 67. 2 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 began in the Fox family home would “pass away with the present generation, or with the persons who seem now to be the medium of this extraordinary communication; or whether it be the commencement of a new era of spiritual influx into the world.” He was sure, though that something important had begun in April of

1848 in a modest farmhouse in western New York.4

Reverend Samuel Williams was unsure if he agreed with Capron’s assessment. He was sure, however, that spirit communication had taken the country by storm. Kate and Maggie Fox were becoming celebrities and may found it fashionable to gather around séance tables, hoping to experience their own interaction with the spectral realm. Williams’s curiosity finally got the best of him and when he was invited to attend a séance for himself, he eagerly obliged. As he entered the parlor, Williams joined six other participants, all “professing Christians,” and a young woman who would act as medium for the séance. The medium fell into a trance and the séance began. The medium reported that there were ten spirits in the room, most of whom were children. Over the next several minutes, the medium reunited the parents in the room with their dead children. Williams was undoubtedly moved by the relief he saw in the faces on the other side of the table.

He had just witnessed something miraculous.5

Next, the medium described the other spirit in the room. He was an elderly man who was standing right behind Williams. The spirit was very interested in communicating with the pastor. Williams began racking his brain. Whose spirit was

4 E.W. Capron and George Willets, “Communications with Spirits in Western New York” New York Tribune, November 22. 1849, 2. 5 Campbell, Pittsburgh and Allegheny Spirit Rappings, 65-66. 3 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 trying to contact him? Four months earlier, Reverend Williams’s dear friend and colleague, Rev. Charles Wheeler, had died of a pulmonary hemorrhage at the age of sixty-six. Could Reverend Wheeler be trying to contact him from beyond the grave?

If Williams was intent on investigating this scientific phenomenon, now was his chance.6

“Was this spirit a friend of mine?” Williams asked the medium. A quiet, yet distinct rap was heard emanating from the dining table around which the séance was held. The medium assured the party this was an answer in the affirmative from the spirit of Williams’ deceased friend.

“Was this spirit a relative of mine?” No sound was heard.

“Was this friend of mine a Christian?” Another affirmative rap, this time louder than the first.

“Was this spirit a Christian minister?” The rap was again louder than the previous one. Williams was getting closer to identifying the spirit that was trying to contact him.

“Is this spirit Dr. Charles Wheeler?” This question was answered by several loud raps, seemingly from within the table. Astounded, Williams took a few minutes to form a conception of what he was doing. The others gathered around the table waited anxiously as Williams decided what to ask of his departed friend.

Now came the questions that Williams wanted most to ask. “Do you value and love the truths you formerly preached in life? Do you exalt the views of the

6 William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit or Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of Various Denomination, volume VI (New York: Robert Carter & Bros., 1860), 404. 4 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 divinity of Christ?” Williams asked the spirit directly. The Baptist preacher had an unprecedented opportunity – to test the validity of his Protestant Christian beliefs.

Would the spirit of his close friend and colleague affirm Williams’ deeply held faith and life’s pursuit? Or would the transcendental knowledge gained in the spirit world nullify the tenets of Christianity? The spirit answered Williams in the affirmative.

The spirit of Dr. Wheeler maintained after death his earthly belief in Christianity – and so did Williams. Williams went on to attend numerous séances, but his

Christianity never wavered. Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Pittsburgh and after 1858 of a church in Akron, Ohio, Samuel Williams retired to Brooklyn, New

York, in 1874 and continued to preach until his death.7

Believing Christians like Williams force historians of American religion to reexamine what being a “Spiritualist” in antebellum America actually meant. In her groundbreaking study of political radicalism within the Spiritualist movement, Anne

Braude recognized the inherent difficulty in studying a group that is notoriously indefinable. “Because Spiritualists have no genetic identity, I will presume that a

Spiritualist is anyone participating in a Spiritualist activity or idea.”8 This definition, as she concedes, is less than ideal. It does, however, speak to the paradox that any study of Spiritualism must overcome: who is – and who is not – a Spiritualist?

Spiritualists, as Radical Spirits argues, are politically and socially progressive, are actively involved in reform movements including abolition, women’s suffrage and

7 1886 Samuel Williams letter preserved in the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, transcribed and accessed digitally at http://sidneyrigdon.com/RigdonPA.htm#1925-09b. 8 Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 8. 5 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 the reform dress movement, and are theologically latitudinarian.9 Williams does fit with one of these categories. He, like many northern evangelical preachers, had begun speaking out against slavery as early as 1827.10 However, Williams was the pastor of a conservative Regular Baptist denomination, and as such would have been no fan of women’s suffrage or the reform dress movement. His strict Calvinist theology would have precluded him from entertaining any thoughts of universalism or human perfectionism – the logical conclusion of Spiritualist theology.11 If we use

Braude’s exhaustive definition, we are forced to conclude that Williams was a

Spiritualist. He did, after all, participate in a Spiritualist activity by attending several séances. However, if we use Braude’s characterization of a Spiritualist – that he or she was often involved in radical politics – Williams certainly was not a Spiritualist.

Braude’s study of Spiritualism falls within the first of two historiographical schools. Ann Braude, Molly McGarry, Barbara Weisberg, and Robert Cox offer studies of Spiritualism that begin with the Rochester Rappings in 1848. Obviously, this is a reasonable place to start. Contemporaneous observers of Spiritualism, including Eliab Capron, recognized that the Rochester Rappings inaugurated something very new. New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley gave the new movement a name in 1852 when he dubbed the sudden belief in spirit

9 Braude, Radical Spirits, 56-81. Also see Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 94-120, 154-176. 10 John Newton Boucher, A Century and a Half of Pittsburg and Her People, v2 (New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1908), 244. 11 Robert W. Delp, “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850-1854,” The New England Quarterly 53 (3) (1980): 360. 6 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 communication “modern Spiritualism” and its adherents “Spiritualists.”12 The studies produced by this first group of historians examined the progressive cultural implications of American Spiritualism, placing Spiritualists at the center of many of the major shifts in public attitudes toward gender, the institutionalization of medicine, race relations, social reform, and sexual identity in the nineteenth century. When historians have interpreted Spiritualism as a movement that began with the Rochester Rappings in 1848, they have emphasized the social and cultural ramifications of the movement at the expense of its theological origins. If American

Spiritualism is understood to have begun with the Rochester Rappings – and historians in this first school argue that it did – this provides a clue to resolving the

Spiritualist paradox. If Spiritualism began in 1848, there were no Spiritualists until

1848. This temporal boundary, however, belies the long history of metaphysical religion in America.

The second school of thought on the Spiritualist paradox is predicated on the argument that nineteenth-century Spiritualism was the manifestation of longstanding metaphysical beliefs. Jon Butler deserves credit for introducing the importance of the metaphysical beliefs to historians of American religion. He illustrated the inseparability of the occult and lay religion in early modern Europe and effectively made the case that the occult religious traditions were transplanted effectively to British North America.13 Catherine Albanese expands this thesis in A

Republic of Mind and Spirit. Albanese views Spiritualism as a form of “mental magic”

12 Weisberg, Talking to the Dead, 147. 13 Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990, 7-36, 67-97. 7 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

– a legacy of European lay religion and popular occultism. American Spiritualism also inherited from European metaphysical traditions the tendency to embrace ancient cosmological ideas concerning the relationship between this material world and the importance of movement and energy. She argues that movement, both in a physical sense in a physical plane and in a spiritual sense, is an essential characteristic of all metaphysical traditions, including Spiritualism. The work of

Leigh Eric Schmidt can also be associated with this historiographical school.

Schmidt places Spiritualism within a broader enlightenment tradition, insisting that transatlantic philosophical developments, including religious liberalism, gave rise to

Spiritualism as a popular phenomenon.

Bret Carroll attempts to solve the Spiritualist paradox by tracing the origins of American Spiritualism to other metaphysical beliefs that existed in America since the late eighteenth century. Carroll acknowledges the European metaphysical tradition explored by Albanese and Butler, but maintains that popular movements such as Mesmerism, somnambulism, and Swedenborgianism coalesced to become

American Spiritualism. The connection between Spiritualism and

Swedenborgianism, in particular, is tantalizing – after all, Andrew Jackson Davis, the principle intellectual behind Spiritualism, received much of his spectral wisdom from the ghost of Emmanuel Swedenborg. However, Robert Cox complicates this relationship by pointing out the often-contentious relationship between Spiritualists and Swedenborgians. If Spiritualism were as intertwined with Swedenborgianism as

Carroll suggests, the groups would not have been so disparate and combative during the period in which they coexisted. By placing the origin of Spiritualism slightly 8 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 before the Rochester Rappings, Carroll and Cox frame the Spiritualist phenomenon entirely differently than Braude or McGarry. To Carroll, Spiritualism was “not an aberration in antebellum America life but an understandable and even logical historical and cultural phenomenon.”14 Clearly, the date at which Spiritualism is understood to have begun is important. This second group of historians places the beginning of American Spiritualism much earlier than 1848. If Spiritualism was just the popular expression of a longstanding metaphysical tradition, how does that affect our understanding of the Spiritualist paradox? Was Rev. Samuel Williams a

Spiritualist in this interpretative model?

The two schools of thought on the Spiritualist paradox offer very different characterizations of what a nineteenth-century Spiritualist looked like. In the first model, a Spiritualist is a reformer, a political radical, fiercely opposed to any effort to establish a creed or institutionalize the movement. She has much more in common with Susan B. Anthony than Emmanuel Swedenborg.15 In the second model, a Spiritualist is characterized as contemplative, secretive, and rational, trapped between the “Enlightenment [which] dictated an impersonal, remote, and abstract deity of natural law… and… Romantic sentimentality [which] required a warm and personal cosmic presence.”16 The recent historiography of American

14 Bret E. Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 1-2. 15 Braude, Radical Spirits, 58. 16 The use of “she” is deliberate. Carroll’s and Cox’s studies deal mostly with male Spiritualists while Braude and McGarry focus on women Spiritualists. Perhaps this is a consequence of the different origin dates. Women were integral in the reform efforts associated with Spiritualism while men were more involved in developing the theological and political position of American Spiritualism. Carroll, Spiritualism 9 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritualism has struggled to reach a definitive description of the type of people who made up the American Spiritualist movement because it has not yet agreed upon the temporal parameters of the movement, itself.

More importantly, someone like Rev. Williams fits into neither of these schools of thought. He is no reformer. He is no occultist. He is, however, a

Spiritualist. “Becoming Occult” introduces a new interpretative framework for understanding American Spiritualism. The struggle to make sense of the Spiritualist paradox has led historians to move the beginning date for Spiritualism further into the past. This strategy has only complicated the definition of “Spiritualist” by focusing on the long intellectual history of metaphysical thought. What historians have failed to realize is that nineteenth-century Spiritualists, themselves, struggled with the Spiritualist paradox. The intellectual elite of Spiritualism dedicated much of their time pondering who was – and who was not – a Spiritualist.

“Becoming Occult” answers this question by proposing that American

Spiritualism must be understood as a two successive movements: Antebellum

Spiritualism, a popular, inclusive cultural phenomenon born in “a culture bursting with innovative and experimental new movements in religion, social reform and science,”17 and Orthodox Spiritualism, a period in which the formerly inclusive movement coalesced around the intellectual authority of a Spiritualist elite that intentionally alienated many who identified with the antebellum Spiritualist

in Antebellum America, 87. Another book that belongs in this second school is Cathy Gutierrez, Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 17 Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America, 1. 10 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 movement in order to effect radical social and political change. The watershed between these two movements was the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists, a four-day conference held in Cleveland, Ohio from September 3 through 6, 1867.

This convention, which Ann Braude erroneously called “uneventful,” was in fact a critical turning point for Spiritualism in America.18 This convention marked the end of Antebellum Spiritualism as a broad, inclusive cultural movement. It was this cultural movement that prompted Rev. Samuel Williams to attend his first séance in

1851. For him and the multitude of antebellum Americans who dabbled in spirit communication in the years following the famous Rochester Rappings, Spiritualism was a new development in science – not religion. This popular cultural image of

Spiritualism was viewed through a Protestant Christian lens. To the normative antebellum American culture, communion with the dead was seen as wholly compatible with Christian belief. At worst, Spiritualism was separate from religion – more of a breakthrough in science than in theology. Whatever its religious significance, Spiritualism was acceptable. After all, many Americans believed that communion with the spirit world was scientifically possible. By the early 1850s, séances were in vogue. The tremendous loss of life that resulted from the Civil War further established the séance as a culturally acceptable popular phenomenon in

America. By 1867, however, Christian Spiritualists such as Williams were under attack from the Spiritualist elite that gathered in Cleveland for the Fourth National

Convention.

There existed, from the beginning of the movement, a group of people that

18 Braude, Radical Spirits, 169. 11 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 viewed Spiritualism as much more than a cultural phenomenon. This group – which

I call the Spiritualist orthodoxy – saw Spiritualism’s potential for shedding new light on theology. Soon a new denomination of Christian Spiritualists emerged. This group saw the advent of spirit communication as a new dispensation of Christianity

– the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to indwell, spiritually, in the souls of his believers. Andrew Jackson Davis, who would become the nucleus around whom the

Spiritualist orthodoxy would emerge, rose to national prominence from this tradition. Over the first decade of antebellum Spiritualist, his writing steered away from the Christian tradition. By the early 1860s, Davis was presenting a Spiritualism that was a belief system within itself. At the fourth national convention of

Spiritualists, he led a dedicated core of Spiritualists sought to create a wholly new movement – a movement that was unhindered by those who professed any other creed or refused to defend Spiritualism militantly. They sought to create a movement that was small and hierarchical enough to enact radical social reform throughout the world. They sought to create an Orthodox Spiritualism.

The key figures in the Fourth National Convention deliberately conspired to reshape Spiritualism into their image. They wanted a movement with boundaries, with a defined (albeit mutable) theology and a hierarchical leadership structure. The

Spiritualism of the previous two decades – the Spiritualism of Kate and Maggie Fox – had to be buried. In its place, a new Spiritualism had to be born. This new

Spiritualism would require total commitment from its adherents. No longer could you be a Christian and a Spiritualist, a moderate and a Spiritualist, or a pacifist and a

Spiritualist. This new Spiritualism was an all-encompassing philosophy. By 1867, to 12 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 be a Spiritualist meant more than a belief in communion with spirits. Spiritualism had been imbued with cultural, political, and religious meaning that it did not have before. This meant that millions of Americans that believed in spirit communication were now on the outside looking in. Most “Spiritualists” refused to alter their

Protestant theology, let alone leave their churches to pursue Spiritualism as a religion. Most “Spiritualists,” even those that agreed with the social reforms

(women’s rights, abolition, etc.) that Spiritualism inspired were unwilling to support a movement that threatened to overthrow the United States government. This new

Spiritualism, inspired by the theology of its patriarch and the political agenda of its matriarch, had breached the limits of popular American culture. Spiritualism in the decades after the American Civil War was less socially, theologically or politically aligned with the values of what David Sehat terms the moral establishment – the vast majority of Americans who subscribed to a system of morals inspired by

Protestant Christianity. This transition may provide insight into the process by which a religious movement becomes considered occult...

Beyond offering a new interpretation of Spiritualism in America, “Becoming

Occult” is a case study in how a cultural fascination evolves into a new religious movement. Recently, scholars of religion have argued that the traditional church- sect-denomination-cult interpretation of new religious movements is methodologically and interpretively problematic.19 This study employs a recently

19 For an overview of the growing dissatisfaction with this interpretive model, see David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, “Reconceptualizing Types of Religious Organization: Dominant, Sectarian, Alternative, and Emergent Tradition Groups,” 13 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 introduced interpretive technique that seeks to define a new religious movement in terms of its alignment with “dominant social institutions.” This interpretative model classifies religious movements as either dominant, sectarian, alternative, or emergent. More critically, this model allows for a tradition’s alignment with dominant social institutions to change over time. Evolving alignment is crucial to understanding Spiritualism in nineteenth-century America. Antebellum Spiritualism can be classified as a sectarian religious tradition within this model. Those who sought to reconcile Protestant Christianity with Spiritualism in the antebellum period were challenging “one or more aspects of dominant tradition doctrine/ritual

[the séance], organization/leadership [mediumship], and/or logic and organization of other established institutions.”20

At the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists, we can observe the

Spiritualist orthodoxy transforming Spiritualism from a sectarian religious tradition to an emergent religious tradition. This shift from sectarian (antebellum

Spiritualism) to emergent (Orthodox Spiritualism) is evinced by a Spiritualism’s increasing incompatibility with dominant social institutions. Andrew Jackson Davis, his wife, Mary F. Davis, and their inner circle had lofty goals for Spiritualism. They intended for the movement, which they viewed as an all-encompassing philosophy, to leave an indelible mark on the affairs of men. Their agenda seems outlandish today. They wanted to create moral police societies that would offer and enforce a new morality that transcended Judeo-Christian moral principles. They wanted to

Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15 (3) (2012): 23- 24 n2. 20 Bromley and Melton, “Reconceptualizing Types of Religious Organization,” 4-7. 14 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 create a secret society comprised of Spiritualism’s most intelligent and well- connected men and women that would be charged with infiltrating the governments of the world in order to steer those governments towards Spiritualist ideals. They sought to stem the rising tide of Christian influence in American politics by defeating the proposed “Christian Amendment” to the United States Constitution by threatening bloody overthrow of the U.S. Government. To accomplish these goals, this Spiritualist orthodoxy had to first prune from its ranks those who stood in its way. To use the language of David G. Bromley and J Gordon Melton’s interpretive model, Orthodox Spiritualism was “low in both cultural and social alignment.” The

Spiritualist orthodoxy’s goals for Spiritualism did not align with normative cultural and social values, leading to the Fourth National Convention’s redefinition of

“Spiritualist.”

Additionally, the Bromley-Melton interpretive model offers an explanation for the eventual demise of American Spiritualism. “While emergent groups are quintessential outsiders, they share in common only the labels that signify their rejection. There is virtually none of the cohesiveness of the dominant tradition groups or subsets of sectarian and alternative tradition groups.” The goals of the

Spiritualist orthodoxy were unsuccessful. Despite their obvious passion and ambition, the Moral Police Societies, the Secret Society, and the Spiritualist Army never coalesced. Indeed, the Spiritualist movement as a whole eventually devolved into a laughingstock by the early twentieth century. What the Spiritualist orthodoxy lacked was cohesiveness. This is evident at the Fourth National Convention. As the definition of “Spiritualist” began to shrink, the Spiritualist orthodoxy faced 15 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 progressively more internal opposition. In broader culture, the shrinking definition of “Spiritualist” meant that more American labeled Spiritualism as “occult.” The word occult has always been associated with spirit communication, but its definition shifted in the mid-nineteenth century. As R. Laurence Moore pointed out, some nineteenth-century alternative religious movements embraced the label, hoping it would convey to a broader public that the movement had attained a higher understanding of the universe.21 These religious groups were evoking a definition of occult that suggested their philosophy allowed one to apprehend the esoteric. When literary scholar David Mather Masson used the term word occult in 1856 to describe

John Keats’s conception of life, he was employing the term in such a way. It is not until 1884 that the word “occult” is used to evoke a possibly nefarious association with the dark arts and black magic. During the time between 1856 and 1884,

Spiritualism was transitioning from sectarian tradition to emergent tradition, and this transformation is reflected in the ways in which the word occult is associated with the movement.

At ten o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, September 3, 1867, the rapping of

Newman Weeks’s gavel rang out above the cacophony of crowded Brainard Hall in

Cleveland, Ohio. The lauded acoustics of the grand opera hall were now working against the forty-three year old New Englander as he endeavored to call to order the three hundred twenty delegates from twenty states that comprised the Fourth

National Convention of Spiritualists. The planning committee had the foresight to

21 R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 109. 16 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 reserve the twelve hundred-person venue knowing that the gathering would attract attention from the locals. Indeed, when Weeks looked out from the stage, he saw

Brainard Hall filled to capacity with curious onlookers, devoted Spiritualists, and members of the press. Unknowingly, Weeks was about to inaugurate a new era of

American Spiritualism. The inclusive, cultural phenomenon that was Antebellum

Spiritualism began had begun twenty years earlier with mysterious rappings underneath the beds of Kate and Maggie Fox. That all would come to an end when

Newman Weeks rapped on the podium to bring the Fourth National Convention of

Spiritualists to order.

17 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

CHAPTER II

“YOU HAVE TAKEN AWAY MY SAVIOR” THE ALIENATION OF CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALISTS

Rev. Moses Hull travelled a long way to be a delegate at the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists. As an evangelical minister, though, he was used to travelling. Hull was born near Columbus, Ohio in 1836. The Hulls were a thoroughly

Baptist family with each generation producing a new Baptist minister. That ended in

1843 when Moses’s father joined the Millerites. After the Great Disappointment, the elder Hull joined the United Brethren Church and began holding church meetings in the Hull family home. It was at these church meetings that Moses Hull turned his love for God into an evangelical zeal that would define his ministerial career. At age sixteen, Hull joined the United Brethren Church, much to the delight of his father and of the local congregation, who hoped the precocious and naturally gifted young man would grow up to make a fine preacher. Indeed, he did. Hull began preaching within a year of joining the church. Five years later, Hull converted to Seventh-day

Adventism. Now twenty-one, Hull began preaching full-time throughout Illinois,

Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Ontario. Hull delighted in warning Adventist congregations about the dangerous of Spiritualism. He cautioned that Spiritualism offered false promises that lured wayward Christians down a path of delusion and demon-worship.1

After one such sermon, a Spiritualist with whom Hull was acquainted

1 Daniel Hull, Biography of Moses Hull (Wellesley, Mass.: Maugus Printing Company, 1907), 7-19. 18 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 approached Rev. Hull and asked the young preacher to listen to his experience and reconsider whether or not Spiritualism and Christianity were incompatible. The man told Hull that he had recently attended a séance circle. The medium, while in a trance, instructed the man to go out to a specific street corner. There, he will find a young woman having a hushed conversation with another man. That woman, according to the entranced medium, was in need of some money. The man did as the medium instructed, found the woman engaged in conversation and handed her some money. The woman looked back at him astonished. She was a widow who was on the verge of being evicted from her home unless she could produce – that night – the very sum of money the man had handed her. The man with whom she was having a conversation represented the poor widow’s last hope. She was going to prostitute herself in order to save her home. Now, thanks to the Adventist-turned-

Spiritualist man, she could preserve her honor and her home.2

After hearing the man’s testimony, Hull began to wonder whether

Spiritualism and Christianity were as mutually exclusive as he had preached.

Perhaps, Spiritualism was a new dispensation in Christianity. Perhaps Christians need not abstain from the phenomenon of spirit communication that was taking the country by storm. Over the next few years, Rev. Moses Hull began to preach

Spiritualism as compatible with Christianity. Hull was, albeit temporarily, a

Christian Spiritualist. However, this was just a stop along the road to becoming a member of the Spiritualist orthodoxy.

2 Moses Hull, The Contrast: Evangelicalism and Spiritualism Compared (Boston: William White and Company, 1873) 134-135. 19 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

In 1864, Hull travelled to New York to assist C.W. Sperry, another Seventh- day Adventist minister with a series of tent meetings. As Sperry preached during one of these revivals, his lungs began to hemorrhage. Sperry was quickly removed from the stage and brought to the nearby home of a parishioner. Death was fast approaching and Sperry requested that Hull join him in his last moments.

“Brother Hull, is there a life beyond? Do you know that the dead will rise?” he asked him.

“Why, Brother Sperry! I have heard you preach a number of times to prove that the dead will rise, and now do you ask me that question?” Hull responded in disbelief.

“Brother Hull, give me proof that the dead will live again,” said Sperry in between coughing fits. Hull preached to Sperry for several minutes about the assurance of salvation, the expectation of heaven, and the rewards that was surely coming to a man of God like Sperry. Sperry was unmoved. He had heard all of the preaching before. He had preached it himself. After several minutes of silence, Hull asked Sperry if he was satisfied with his arguments.

“I am dying now, Brother Hull, and I want you to preach my funeral, but O, don’t you let those who hear you preach die as I die today, without a hope of life in the beyond.” Sperry’s final words to Moses Hull marked a turning point. No longer could Hull reconcile Spiritualism with his Seventh-day Adventist faith. Hull left the church in 1865. Two years later, as he made the trek from northwestern Illinois to

Cleveland, Ohio, Rev. Moses Hull was back on the road, filled with as much evangelical fervor as he had ever been. But now, the only creed he confessed was 20 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 that of Spiritualism.3

Moses Hull’s journey to Cleveland was not unlike that of many of his fellow delegates. The majority of Americans who dabbled in spirit communication in the

1850s were Christians. As the Civil War raged, countless homes were affected by the massive loss of life and general uncertainty that the war brought. In such times of tragedy, millions of Christian Americans turned to séance tables in an attempt to reconnect with lost loved ones.4 By the postwar period, however, a group of elite, well-educated Spiritualists began to grow impatient with Christian Spiritualists.

This forming orthodoxy viewed their commitments to Christian theology as detrimental to the goals of American Spiritualism. This Spiritualist orthodoxy was made up of men and women like Moses Hull – men and women who were well acquainted with what Christianity had to offer. As with Moses Hull, Christianity had left this Spiritualist orthodoxy wanting. For Moses Hull to reconcile the world around him, he had to shed his faith in Adventism and embrace Spiritualism wholeheartedly. For Spiritualism to achieve its goals of a more perfect spiritual society, it had to shed its Christians.

The first evening of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists featured two keynote speakers: Selden J. Finney, a Spiritualist medium and member of the

New York delegation who was actively involved in establishing some of the first

3 Daniel Hull, Biography of Moses Hull (Wellesley, Mass.: Maugus Printing Company, 1907), 7-19. 4 It is no coincidence that we see a significant rise in the ghost as an element in fiction in the immediate postwar period. See Weisberg, Talking to the Dead, 210- 211; and Jennifer Bann, “Ghostly Hands and Ghostly Agency: The Changing Figure of the Nineteenth-Century Specter,” Victorian Studies 51 (4) (2009): 663-686. 21 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritualist lyceums near Albany5; and Mary F. Davis, wife of Andrew Jackson Davis and prominent Spiritualist lecturer and reformer.6 Finney spoke first, delivering a lecture entitled “Character of the Spiritual Philosophy,” in which he argued that the spirit world would enlighten humanity over time to the eternal truths of

Spiritualism and eventually, all “half-truths” of sensationalism, idealism and pantheism would eventually coalesce into one perfect spiritual philosophy. Finney’s lecture captured the conservative position on the relationship between Spiritualism and other philosophies and religions. To Finney, all religions that came before

Spiritualism were imperfect; yet old religions were pursuing a truth that only spirit communication would allow them to comprehend.7

Finney’s lecture on the first evening of the Fourth National Convention of

Spiritualists was an attempt to diminish this criticism and reconcile Spiritualism with Christianity. When referring to the idea that Spiritualism is a system for observing and attaining godhood, Finney argued that “it is true it makes religion natural; but then it makes nature spiritual and divine. It does not degrade God to

‘matter’; it elevates ‘matter’ to spirit. It does not reduce religion to ‘material’ science; it elevates science to the divine business of justifying, explaining and demonstrating religion.” Finney’s efforts to reconcile Spiritualism and Christianity were in vain. The

5 Selden J. Finney “Troy Children’s Lyceum,” Banner of Light, July 6, 1867, 5; Child, “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 5, 1867, 1. 6 Both Andrew Jackson Davis and Mary F. Davis were members of the New York delegation. Andrew Jackson Davis, preface, A Sacred Book, Containing Old and New Gospels: Derived and Translated from The Inspirations of Original Saints (Boston: William White & Company, 1873); Andrew Jackson Davis, The Magic Staff; an Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis (New York: J.S. Brown & Co., 1857) 540- 547. 7 Child “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 5, 1867, 1-2. 22 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 intellectual leaders of Spiritualism had taken away Christianity’s savior – the lynchpin for the millions of Americans who identified as Christian while dabbling in spirit communication. And while Finney was interested in providing Christian

Spiritualists with an intellectual route back into Spiritualism’s fold, most of his colleagues had no interest in reconciling Christianity with Spiritualism.

Finney’s effort to reconcile Christianity with Spiritualism was a remnant of the 1850s. Spiritualism in the 1850s was an inclusive, nebulous cultural movement.

It professed no creed, maintained no organizing body, and maintained no orthodoxy.

Indeed, much of the early career of Andrew Jackson Davis was devoted to aligning

Spiritualism with the dominant social institution of the day: Protestant Christianity.

In the summer of 1850, Andrew Jackson Davis travelled to Stratford, Connecticut to investigate a particularly sensational spirit manifestation that afflicted the home of

Rev. Eliakim Phelps, the minister of the Orthodox Congregational Church in

Stratford.8 When Davis arrived at the Phelps home in Stratford, he witnessed spectacular spirit manifestations, including a dinner fork whizzing through the air and phantom pebbles plucking the strings of the piano.9 Over the next few weeks, the manifestations became more dramatic. Phantom footsteps were routinely heard emanating from the second floor, and mysterious artwork and eerie messages were scrawled on the walls. The manifestations intensified when an unseen hand

8 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Austin Phelps: A Memoir (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons: 1892), 3. 9 Andrew Jackson Davis, The Magic Staff, 436-439. 23 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 shredded the clothing Rev. Phelps’s eleven-year-old son, Harry, was wearing.10

Davis had seen enough. He returned to Hartford began harmonizing his own spiritual philosophy with the emergence of Modern Spiritualism.

Like Rev. Samuel Williams, Phelps interpreted his own encounter with spirit communication as wholly separate from his religion:

In many of these places, they are said to advance ideas on the doctrines of religion, wholly at variance with the teachings of the Bible and subversive of many essential truths which the Bible reveals. Under an impression that whatever is communicated by a spirit must of course be true, many persons are receiving these communications as the truth of God – as a new revelation from the spirit world. But it should be remembered that there is no proof that what purports to be a revelation from spirits is the work of spirits at all.11

According to Rev. Phelps’s youngest son, Austin, who was six years old when the manifestations began, Eliakim never waivered in his orthodox Calvinist doctrine or in his “profound reverence that he had for the office and work of a Christian pastor.”12

Davis, however, returned to Hartford with a different interpretation of events. His 1846 Principles of Nature laid the groundwork for Christian Spiritualism, the idea that Spirit communication represented a new dispensation on God’s relationship with man. Practically, the Phelps’s poltergeist allowed Davis to align his own philosophical writings with the emerging Spiritualist movement. As Modern

Spiritualism became more popular in antebellum America, Davis’s relentless touring

10 Lewis Spence, “Phelps, The Rev. Dr. Eliakim,” in Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, 2(Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing, 2003), 703. 11 Charles Wyllys Elliot, Mysteries; or, Glimpses of the Supernatural (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), 176-177. 12 Phelps, Austin Phelps, 4. 24 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 and prolific writing made him Spiritualism’s principle theologian and one if the movement’s most public faces.13

Davis rose to national prominence when he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, in the winter of 1850-1851. During his four-year residency in Hartford, Davis hosted lectures and demonstrations of mesmerism and spirit communication. He published his magnum opus there, which he titled The Great Harmonia. It was a multi-volume work that featured communications between Davis and his spiritual mentor,

Emanuel Swedenborg, as well as theological and cosmological writings from Davis and various otherworldly muses.14

According to Davis, God ushers in a new dispensation only when mankind has developed enough to comprehend it. The Mosaic dispensation was harsh, unforgiving, and simplistic because it represented the harshness and simplicity of

Hebrew society. Had Moses himself been as perfect as Christ, his dispensation would have reflected the more perfect spirituality of the Christian dispensation.15 The advent of spirit communication and the new theology of the Great Harmonia represented a new dispensation that accounted for the myriad developments in science and reason that had taken place since the Christian dispensation went into effect. Davis’s new dispensation maintained the divinity of Christ, and extoled the virtues of religion. Religion, according to Davis, “teaches man to discriminate and

13 Robert W. Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet of American Spiritualism,” Journal of American History 54 (1) (1967): 43-47. 14 Robert W. Delp, “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850-1854,” The New England Quarterly 53 (1) (1980): 347-349. 15 Andrew Jackson Davis, The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse: Being An Explanation of Modern Mysteries (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1866), 16-17. 25 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 judge right and wrong; to desire happiness. It teaches him to love the lofty mount, the flowered valley, the waving forest, and the fragrant meadow.” Religion, particularly Christian religion, is a good thing and Christ was deserving of worship.

Davis’s early exegesis of his own Harmonial Philosophy is not much different than that the theology argued by Horace Bushnell, Congregationalist minister and renowned theologian and reformer who also lived in Hartford. In order for Davis to gain respect in Hartford, he had to reconcile his Harmonial Philosophy with the rationalistic Christianity of Horace Bushnell.16 Though Bushnell was generally viewed as suspect by his Congregationalist colleagues for his unorthodox teachings,

Bushnell was a linchpin of Hartford intellectual society. Davis went about the process of winning Bushnell’s support by making the case that Spiritualism was a new dispensation of Christianity. In those early writings, Davis frequently compared the new spiritual dispensation to the Protestant Reformation. He made the argument that the advent of Protestantism merely traded the domination and idolatry of the priesthood for the inflexible “dogmatism of infallibility.”17 By portraying mainline Protestantism as theologically dead and comparing biblical infallibility with the rigidity of Catholic priesthood, Davis evoked language that was very familiar – and very palatable – to mid-nineteenth century Christian audiences.

Supernaturalism, as Davis called the early incarnations of his philosophy, was merely the reinsertion of the rational individual into Christian theology.18

16 Delp, “Spiritualist in Connecticut,” 353. 17 Andrew Jackson Davis, Approaching Crisis, 11. 18 Ibid., 17. 26 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Davis goes on to argue that his Harmonial Philosophy is wholly compatible with Christianity, going as far as to say, “there is surely nothing [in the Harmonial

Philosophy] intrinsically opposed to the fundamental teachings of Rationalistic

Christianity.” Andrew Jackson Davis’s Harmonial Philosophy – at least as it was argued in 1851 – was fully supportive of the divinity of Christ, divine providence, the ministry of angels, and the power of prayer. All of these central tenets of

Christianity, Davis argued, were “explainable upon unchangeable principles, which have proceeded from Deity into and through the universe.”19 Andrew Jackson

Davis’s early apologetic writings portrayed Spiritualism as a new dispensation within the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the army of Spiritualist lecturers that toured the country in the antebellum period followed the lead of the Poughkeepsie

Seer.

By the mid-1850s, Christian Spiritualists had become a powerful subgroup within the broader Spiritualist movement. This new group even enjoyed its own weekly periodical, the Christian Spiritualist, published from 1854 to1856. Edited initially by John Toohey, who would go on to be a member of the Rhode Island delegation to the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists, the Christian

Spiritualist was devoted to reconciling two belief systems – Christianity and

Spiritualism – that, a decade later, had grown so far apart that Spiritualists actively purged believing Christians from their ranks.

Toohey included a reference to Christ’s discourse on ceremonial pollution in the banner of every edition of Christian Spiritualist. Recounted in the fifteenth

19 Ibid. 27 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 chapter of Matthew and the seventh chapter of Mark, the Pharisees criticize Jesus and his apostles for not partaking in the traditional washing of hands before breaking bread. Jesus responds by critiquing the Pharisees’ doctrinaire adherence to tradition, saying, “Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” The fact that Toohey chose this biblical verse to feature, prominently, in every edition of his Christian Spiritualist is indicative of the confidence with which

Christian Spiritualists reconciled spirit communication with Protestant Christianity.

Toohey’s paper was a reaction to the increasing number of Spiritualists who, by the late 1850s, began to view Spiritualism as a philosophy that invalidated or supplanted biblical truth. To Toohey, non-biblical Spiritualism was something his heavenly father did not plant, and would be rooted up, perhaps through the efforts to Toohey and his Christian Spiritualist compatriots. 20

Toohey’s Christian Spiritualist philosophy was based on the sixteenth chapter of John. In this chapter, Jesus warned his apostles that he would soon leave them. Jesus made it clear, however, that his departure from earth would mean the end of his religious instruction to them: “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come.”21 To Toohey and other Christian Spiritualists, this passage provided was a direct reference from

20 This theme was prevalent throughout Christian Spiritualist. See, for example, “Spiritual Manifestations: Explaining Creations, Subversions, Redemptions, and Harmonies and Their Relations to Each Other,” Christian Spiritualist, June 3, 1854, 1. 21 John 16:12, KJV. 28 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Christ, himself, to the future advent of spirit communication. Toohey conceded that many of the more prominent Christian Spiritualists were far from orthodox

Trinitarians, but they believed the Bible was divinely inspired, true, and worthy of daily study and meditation, and worshiped Christ as the divine son of God. 22 In the late 1850s, Toohey was, like many Americans, both a Christian and a Spiritualist.

When Toohey joined the Rhode Island delegation in 1867, he did so as a Spiritualist only.

Toohey turned over the editorship of Christian Spiritualist to Emma Hardinge in 1856 and began a career as an itinerant lecturer. In May of 1857, the Society for the Diffusion of Spiritual Knowledge, a Spiritualist circle in Manhattan, New York, that published Christian Spiritualist, shuts its doors due to the withdrawal of financial support from the circle’s wealthy benefactor.23 The simultaneous demise of the Society for the Diffusion of Spiritual Knowledge and Christian Spiritualist meant that two major vehicles for the propagation of Christian Spiritualism were no longer working to maintain the central tenets of Christianity within antebellum

Spiritualism. Toohey, like many Christian Spiritualists, began drifting away from a

Christian interpretation of Spiritualism.24 Toohey is a representative figure in the evolution of Spiritualism’s alignment with the dominant social institutions of his day. Many Spiritualists in the antebellum period would be classified, like Toohey, as

22 J.H.W. Toohey, A Review of Rev. I.E. Dwinell’s Sermon Against Spiritualism (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1857), 12-14. 23 Emma Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years’ Record of the Communion Between Earth and the World of Spirits, 2e (New York: Emma Hardinge, 1870), 141. 24 “Iconoclastic and Not Constructive, The Spiritualist Analyst,” The Boston Investigator, September 27, 1871, 4. 29 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Christian Spiritualists. As Modern Spiritualism moved into the era of Orthodox

Spiritualism, a commitment to Christian theology became untenable within the movement. By abandoning his Christian faith, Toohey aligned himself with the newly formed Spiritualist orthodoxy. However, Toohey’s unwillingness to submit to the authority of Andrew Jackson Davis placed him firmly outside of that Spiritualist orthodoxy, as we will see in a later chapter.

In order to make Spiritualist philosophy palatable to an overwhelmingly

Protestant antebellum society, Andrew Jackson Davis, John Toohey, and others had to align their emerging philosophy with the moral establishment. This was accomplished in large part by describing Spiritual phenomenon with the language of evangelical Christianity. Davis’s 1857 Nature’s Divine Revelations was full of biblical imagery. The “Poughkeepsie Seer,” as he was known, emphasized the spiritual manifestations found in the book of Acts, suggesting that the new “spiritual dispensation” was a modern Pentecost.25

Throughout the 1850s, Chrstianity and Spiritualism coexisted harmoniously.

Many Christians saw Spiritualism as a new dispensation in Christianity. At the onset of the Civil War, however, Spiritualism’s leading apologists steered Spiritualist theology in another direction entirely. Now that Christian Spiritualists had begun to conceptualize spirit communication as a phenomenon with religious implications, the stage was set for a decade of theological alienation that would result in a dramatic schism between Christians and Spiritualists and a new, widespread

25 Andrew Jackson Davis, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind (Boston: Colby & Rich, 1857), 509-510. 30 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 conceptualization of Spiritualism as an occult movement. Selden Finney’s reconciliatory speech would have been welcomed in the 1850s, but by 1867, his tone was heterodox.

In terms of Spiritualism’s relationship to Christianity, Selden J. Finney was a moderate. But to Christian critics of Spiritualism, Finney’s (relatively conservative) conception of God was nothing short of blasphemous. By this point in Spiritualist theology, almost all well respected Spiritualist intellectuals denied the divinity of

Christ, arguing instead that Christ – and any higher power – was natural and mundane. “Religion,” Finney argued is “possible to man only because he is whatever

God and truth is. Light and love could not pour into us, unless we are built of both light and love.”26 Spiritualism was to Finney a scientific system for the observation of and eventual achievement of godhood. Such a position would necessitate that

Christ may have been more spiritually progressed than his contemporaries, but he was man, not God.

This notion did not sit well with Christians, even Christians who were involved in spirit communication. Henry C. Wright, a popular Spiritualist lecturer, abolitionist reformer, and member of the Massachusetts delegation – was instrumental in propagating Spiritualist theology throughout the country. He was particularly known for arguing that Christ was not divine. On Tuesday afternoon, the first day of the convention, Wright proclaimed that Spiritualism was incompatible with Christianity on three grounds. First, Spiritualism precludes the belief that the Bible is a universal code of morality. To Wright, as to the developing

26 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 5, 1867, 2. 31 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritualist orthodoxy, the ability to receive guidance from the spirit world (either through one’s own mediumship or the mediumship of another) obviates the necessity to have any moral code written into a book. Secondly, the Spiritualist conception of the afterlife makes Christ’s role unnecessary. Each individual is responsible for his or her own spirit progression after death – Wright believed his

“salvation” was by his own merits, not those of Christ. Thirdly, Wright argued that the Spiritualist principle of progression made Spiritualism distinct and incompatible with Christianity. As the spirit progresses in the afterlife, all have the ability to achieve godliness. To Wright, the universality and eventual inevitability of godliness invalidates Trinitarianism specifically and all existing religions generally.27

According to the journalist from the Daily Cleveland Herald who reported on

Wright’s comments, all three points Wright raised were “met with the hearty sympathy of all” of the delegates in attendance.28 Nevertheless, Chauncey Barnes, a medium from Malden, Massachusetts, took it upon himself to offer a rebuttal. Barnes defended the divinity of Christ and the validity of the Bible against Wright’s denial.

Barnes attempted to reconcile Christianity and Spiritualism, much the same way

Christian Spiritualist editor J.W.H. Toohey did a decade before. He believed that the

“Bible was a Spiritual Book, and that Jesus and the apostles were mediums and inspired men.” Barnes’s “old theology” was not welcome at the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists. Isaac Rhen, the president of the Convention, made several attempts to put an end to Barnes’s vehement defense of Christian

27 “The Spiritualists – How They Look – How They Act,” Daily Cleveland Herald, September 4, 1867, 1. 28 Ibid. 32 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritualism. Barnes refused to yield to Rhen and the delegates grew restless and irritated. Eventually, Barnes finished his impromptu speech and returned to his seat.

The reporter from the Daily Cleveland Herald came away with the impression that, despite Barnes’s passionate efforts to reconcile two belief systems that were increasingly incompatible, “the Convention did not think much of the Bible as an infallible rule of conduct, and thought less of Christ as a Mediator.”29

Curiously, the exchange between Wright and Barnes was not included in the minutes of the convention. This could be for one of three reasons. Chauncey Barnes did not attend the convention in any official capacity. He could have been a guest of the Massachusetts delegation, but his name does not appear in any of the documents published by the Fourth National Convention. The exchange might also have been excluded from the minutes because it was an extemporaneous debate. Perhaps

Henry Child, the secretary of the convention who was responsible for keeping the official record, felt that the remarks from Wright and Barnes were clearly not on the agenda of the convention and did not warrant notation. Still, the exchange could have been deliberately omitted from the published records in order to save the convention from embarrassment. If Child deliberately omitted the discussion, he did not do so to protect Henry C. Wright. If Child omitted the exchange, he did so to protect the reputation of the Fourth National Convention against association with

Barnes.

Barnes, like many Spiritualists who found themselves outside of the orthodoxy, would go on to view orthodox Spiritualism with a critical eye. In the

29 “All Sorts of Paragraphs,” Banner of Light, May 18, 1867, 5. 33 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 years that followed the Fourth National Convention, Barnes began to think of himself a prophet. By 1875, he, too, began rejecting the divinity of Christ.30 In 1874,

Chauncey Barnes claimed to be visited by the spirit of George Washington who instructed him to plan a Mediums’ Convention to be held on the nation’s centennial.

The Medium’s Convention was held and Barnes reported that he received no opposition except from “a few of the old Spiritualists,” who “took no part or lot in the convention.” By “old Spiritualists,” Barnes was referring to the Spiritualist orthodoxy. But Barnes was in error. The orthodoxy he was referencing did not comprise “old” Spiritualism – he did.31

As staunch as Henry C. Wright was at the 1867 convention, he was equally committed to separating Spiritualism and Christianity through his lectures. After one such lecture, Wright received a letter from the wife of a Methodist minister who, upon hearing that her salvation or damnation depended on no one but herself wrote to Finney, “You have taken away my Savior.”32 To this woman, and countless other

Christian Spiritualists, the divinity of Christ was non-negotiable. When Spiritualist theology evolved to deny the divinity of Christ, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of people like this Methodist woman ceased to be Spiritualists.

Henry C. Wright’s response to the letter he had received from that alienated

Christian Spiritualist encapsulates the new theological orthodoxy that was forming

30 “The Spiritualists: Proceedings of Yesterday’s Session,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 13, 1875, 16. 31 Chauncey Barnes, “Letter From Chauncey Barnes,” American Spiritual Magazine, January 1875, 183. 32 Henry C. Wright “You Have Taken Away My Savior,” Banner of Light, October 19, 1867, 2. 34 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 in the 1860s. Unlike Finney, Wright was unequivocal about Spiritualism’s lack of respect for Jesus Christ. Wright was delighted that he had taken away the woman’s savior. In a brief but scathing letter back to the woman, Wright launched a series of assaults on the Atonement and the divinity of Christ. No man, he argued, could offer his own life for the sins of another: “Christ, as a Saviour to others, but the sacrificial offering of his blood or his merits, is a MYTH, a DELUSION [Wright’s emphasis] and a hindrance to human growth in knowledge and goodness.”33

Wright had a history of being overly forthright about Spiritualism’s opinions towards the divinity of Christ, and it got him into trouble on the third day of the convention. Early Thursday morning, Wright was walking down Superior Street in downtown Cleveland on his way to the convention.34 A wealthy local man confronted Wright and demanded that he identify himself. Wright responded by telling the man his name. The man’s portly face then contorted to reveal a level of indignation that shocked Wright. The man then furiously threatened to “thrash”

Wright if he saw him in the streets of Cleveland again. Surprised, Wright asked the apparent stranger what he had done to deserve such vitriol. The unnamed man in the street had read the report in Wednesday’s Daily Cleveland Herald that Wright claimed his salvation was of his own merits – not by the merits of Jesus Christ. Any man who would say such a thing “ought to be tarred and feathered and rode on a rail,” according to this indignant Clevelander. Wright responded to the threat by daring the man to thrash him in the middle of the town’s largest and most central

33 Ibid. 34 Willis E. Sibley “Streets,” The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History (1999): http://ech.case.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=S23> (accessed November 1, 2012). 35 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 thoroughfare and reiterating that his salvation was not a product of Christ’s atonement, but of his own merits.35 Wright escaped the confrontation unharmed and with the full realization (if he had not come to such a realization before) that the schism between Spiritualism and Christianity was complete and irreversible. By denying the divinity of Christ, Spiritualism lost the majority of the popular interest it had enjoyed in the 1850s and early 1860s, but neither Wright nor any of the other delegates of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists had any qualms about that.

Mary F. Davis, Andrew Jackson Davis’s wife, used her keynote address to further alienate any Christians that remained at the convention. Davis’s address was principally about the need to expand the system of Spiritualist lyceums. In so doing, however, Davis unleashed a barrage of assaults on Christianity that would become the norm for the remainder of the four-day convention. Davis placed the blame for the world’s ills squarely on the shoulders of the world’s religions. The Spiritualist lyceums Davis promoted would offer an alternative to the parochial and Protestant- leaning common school education most children in postbellum America received.36

The Christian values instilled in American children through these schools, Davis argued, led to “religious bigotry and intolerance,” which she blamed for endemic child abuse.37

To illustrate this point, Davis pointed to an incident that had taken place in

35 Child “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 2, 1867, 1. 36 Stephen J. Denig “Public Support for Religious Education in the Nineteenth- Century United States,” Journal of Research on Christian Education 13 (2004): 88. 37 Child “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 12, 1867, 3. 36 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 western New York as proof that parochial education led to cruelty towards children.

In June of 1866, Rev. Joel Lindsay beat his four-year-old son to death because the child refused to recite his prayers before bed. Lindsay was initially found guilty of murder in the second degree, but was granted a new trial on the basis that he might have been temporarily insane. The second trial resulted in Rev. Lindsay’s acquittal on charges of murder, and Lindsay was instead convicted of manslaughter in the fourth degree – a charge that carried a penalty of 250 dollars. Lindsay’s crime infuriated the nation. Most observers attempted to separate Lindsay’s horrific crime from his status as a Congregational minister, but to Davis, the murder of Lindsay’s son was proof that Christian theology was inherently evil. In her opinion, and in the opinion of the forming Spiritualist orthodoxy, any belief system that would engender such a horrific crime should be “swept away from the earth.” 38

The avidity with which the delegates of the Fourth National Convention of

Spiritualists railed against Christian theology is evidence that the forming

Spiritualist orthodoxy was not interested in accommodating the sensibilities of

Christian Spiritualists, but not all efforts to alienate Christians were so overt. The transition from antebellum Spiritualism to Orthodox Spiritualism required a new

Spiritualist lexicon. As the delegates of the Fourth National Convention of

Spiritualists went about the process of reforming their alignment with the dominant social institutions of postbellum America, they deliberately and consistently

38 “The News,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, January 26, 1867; “Telegrams,” Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, January 29, 1867; “Saturday Night’s Dispatches from Washington,” Milwaukee Daily Sentinel, June 3, 1867; “Morbid Sympathy with Crime,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, March 30, 1867, 18; Child “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 12, 1867. 37 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 employed messianic language and Christian imagery in a symbolic effort to signify the new alignment between Christianity and Spiritualism.

As evidenced by Henry Wright’s run-in with the threatening local, the delegates of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualist had a penchant for using language that would have been considered overtly blasphemous to nineteenth- century audiences. They were particularly fond of referring to each other with allusions and metaphors generally reserved for Christ. To these Spiritualists, all were Christs. The afternoon session of the first day of the convention was devoted to panegyrics to the president of the Third National Convention of Spiritualists, John

Pierpont, who had died over the interim. Newman Weeks, the sole delegate from

Vermont, who had called the meeting to order that morning, remembered Pierpont as a noble man possessing a “tall, majestic form.” Pierpont was apparently so venerated that Weeks wished that he “might be able to even ‘touch the hem of his garment.’” Weeks’s words were not just effusive praise for a prominent Spiritualist embarking on his eternal journey. They employed messianic language to talk about

John Pierpont. The allusion was to Matthew 9:21 in which a woman who was suffering from a bleeding disorder had faith that, if she could just put a hand on

Jesus, she would be healed.39 Miracle healing was not exclusive to Jesus in the New

Testament – all of the apostles healed the sick and both Paul and Peter resurrected the dead. However, the language Weeks used points to a specific reference – one that is reserved for Christ. 40

39 Similar accounts can be found in Matthew 14:36, Mark 3:10, and Luke 6:19. 40Child, “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 5, 1867, 1. 38 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

In a similar way, Dr. R.T. Hallock used biblical language to critique biblical

Christianity. Hallock, delegate from New York, offered a scathing critique of

Protestant Christianity and Catholicism during his keynote lecture on Wednesday night. Christian theology was a dead vessel which he equated to “preserving new vintage in old bottles.” Hallock had a remarkably clear perspective on the state of

American Spiritualism in the immediate postwar period. Hallock thought

Spiritualism, now nearing two decades in existence, had reached a climax in its alignment with the dominant social institutions of the United States. A war was coming. Either Spiritualism or Christianity would emerge from this battle intact, but not both. Hallock saw a war coming that was theological, political, and literal.

The theological front of this war between Spiritualism and Christianity had already been raging for some time. One needed only to look to the experiences of

Henry Ward Beecher, one of mid-nineteenth century America’s most famous

Christian ministers. Beecher served as the minister of Plymouth Church in New

York, one of the largest Congregationalist churches in the nation. In the 1860s, however, the famed Congregationalist had come to question many of the tenets of

Calvinism that brought fame to the Beecher name long before Henry Ward gained prominence through his extensive lecture tours. Beecher was a voracious reader and became acquainted with the social theory of Herbert Spencer, which espoused that progress is a natural and inevitable aspect of existence. Beecher sought to reconcile rationalism and scientific method with Christianity. Such commitment to concepts of progression and rationalism (as well his radical – at the time – support for universal suffrage) gained Beecher scorn from his Congregationalist brethren 39 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 and infamy in the minds of the American public. By 1867, Beecher’s politics and progressive theology had eroded his enviable public reputation. 41 To Hallock, this was proof that Christians were already waging a war on the theologically progressive.

Hallock went on to warn the delegates that they would soon feel very unwelcome in the United States. He foresaw the coming of a political climate in which Christians in the United States government would conspire against

Spiritualists to deny them many of the rights enjoyed by (white) Christians.

Spiritualists would no longer be able to serve as judges, sit on juries, or take the witness stand. Their legal status would be downgraded to deny them the ability to write a will. Hallock urged his audience to be strong – their forthcoming struggle with the dominant social institutions only validated their cause. Spiritualists must become combatants in this war “so that we may know that in all the fume and fury and smoke of battle, we shall not be hurt, and light shall triumph over darkness.”42

Hallock’s language should not be read as entirely figurative. There was a very real sense among the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists that armed conflict between Spiritualists and Christians was a possibility. Increasingly, Americans viewed organized Spiritualism as dangerous and radical, theologically and politically. Hallock concluded his address with a prophetic statement: “the moment reformation becomes a sect, it begins to spoil.” Hallock did not realize the irony of his statement. The convention in which he and his colleagues were participating

41 Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher (New York: Doubleday, 2006): 353-372. 42 Child, “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 26, 1867, 2. 40 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 marked the culmination of a decade-long process of alienation that turned an inclusive, cultural movement into an insular sectarian movement. To nineteenth- century Americans, Spiritualism had begun to spoil. To the millions of Americans that had been displaced by an increasingly radical, hierarchical, and insular movement, Spiritualism was “occult.” The efforts the delegates made to alienate

Christian Spiritualists contributed to Spiritualism becoming an occult movement in the minds of popular American culture.

Why were the delegates to the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists so determined to prune Christians from the movement? To the forming Spiritualist orthodoxy, individuals who participated in séances, attended Spiritualist lectures, and identified as Spiritualists while maintaining a belief in Christianity represented the type of uncommitted, intellectually dishonest practitioners who stood in the way of society’s spiritual progress. The delegates referred to these uncommitted

Spiritualists as Phenomenal Spiritualists. Phenomenal Spiritualists lacked the ideological underpinning to trust in the continuation of spirit revelation even in the absence of continuous spirit communication.43 The Civil War coincided with the height of interest in spirit communication due to the widespread loss of life.

Although more people than ever were trying to contact ghosts, the ghosts, themselves, seemed more reticent than they had been in the 1850s.

The ghosts are not entirely to blame. By the 1860s, Americans expected more out of their apparitions than they had before. Early spirit communication – following the example of the Fox Sisters – was accomplished through audible rappings. Over

43 Robert W. Delp, “Andrew Jackson Davis,” 49-53. 41 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 the next two decades, the Fox Sisters and other prominent mediums made careers out of communicating with spirits. Simply put, audiences, over time, demanded more spectral bang for their buck. Mediums had to vie for market share of audiences in a very competitive marketplace. Those who could produce the most spectacular spirit manifestations – visible apparitions, unseen voices, ectoplasm, etc. – were the most popular.44

This trend was reflected in in-home séances as well. Early séances were content to communicate with spirits through a rudimentary percussive code. This was a relatively easy phenomenon for mediums to reproduce. The Fox Sisters admitted toward the end of their career that they produced the spirit rappings by cracking their joints. However, as later audiences required more spectacular displays of mediumship, such manifestations became more rare because fewer mediums had the skill or technology to produce them.45

Additionally, as the 1860s wore on, more mediums were being exposed as frauds. Leigh Eric Schmidt points out that by the pre-war period, exposing fraudulent mediums had “become something of a sport.” Almost every prominent medium had been met with the charge of impropriety at some point. And as the demand for more sensational displays of mesmerism increased, so did the likelihood that the medium would get caught.46

Both the demand for more spectacular spirit manifestations and the increase

44 Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 26. 45 Weisberg, Talking to the Dead, 243-245. 46 Leigh Eric Schmidt, “From Demon Possession to Magic Show: Ventriloquism, Religion, and the Enlightenment,” Church History 67 (2) (1998): 299-302. 42 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 of skepticism chipped away at popular perception of Spiritualism. The delegates of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists saw this trend as detrimental to the cause of Spiritualism and made efforts to create a boundary between their “true” brand of Spiritualism and the Phenomenal Spiritualism of most American

Spiritualists. Warren Chase, delegate from New York and, himself, a prominent medium and lecturer, was referring to the Phenomenal Spiritualists when he stated caustically “some persons require continued manifestations, and the excitement of controversies and discussions, to keep up their interest in this cause.”47 Simply put, the delegates of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists did not want

Christians in their midst, and since the divinity of Christ and adherence to Christian dogma had become taboo within organized Spiritualism, Christian Spiritualists (at least those who still identified as Spiritualists by 1867) were happy to oblige.

The alienation of Christian Spiritualists was the first step in a three-part process of reorienting Spiritualism’s alignment with normative, postbellum

American society. A Spiritualist orthodoxy was beginning to coalesce around the idea that belief in Christianity – indeed, belief in any religion – was incompatible with the Orthodox Spiritualism. The key figures that would comprise this new orthodoxy were beginning to come to the forefront of the convention, even by the first evening. Andrew Jackson Davis, who had been considered Spiritualism’s primary theologian since the early 1850s, led the charge against those Spiritualists who did not fit his mold: Christian Spiritualists and phenomenal Spiritualists. Those remnants of previous dispensations must be casted aside if Spiritualism was to

47 Child “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 9, 1867, 1. 43 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 achieve its lofty political and social goals.

During Spiritualism’s reorientation process at the fourth national convention, the presence of one group in the audience served as a theological constant. The

North Union Society of Believers had been invited to attend the convention and its leader elder James S. Prescott was invited to deliver an address to the delegates of the convention.48 In so doing, Prescott pointed out that while Spiritualism and

Shakerism shared many of the same theological tenets, the political direction in which the Spiritualist orthodoxy was headed was beyond the pale. Prescott intended to deliver an address that highlighted the similarities between the Society of

Believers and Spiritualism and would welcome the delegates to Cleveland. After sitting through two days of debate, however, he had to revise his speech.49

Prescott echoed many of the theological tenets of the forming Spiritualist orthodoxy, saying that the Shakers had also benefited from spiritual enlightenment throughout their history and that they stood by the Spiritualists’ efforts to incorporate the knowledge of the spectral realm into worldly affairs. The Era of

Manifestations, a period of intense, charismatic spiritual revival among the Society of Believers convinced Shakers that spirit revelation “would go to the world in a form and phase adapted to the world” to bring the world closer to spiritual truth.

Spirit communication and mediumship within Shaker communities predated the

Rochester Rappings by a decade. Prescott and his ilk did not shudder at the idea that

Christ was not God – the theological concept of Spiritual progression was a familiar

48 Stephen J. Stein, The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 108-115. 49 Child, “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867, 1. 44 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 aspect of Shaker theology. The concept of Atonement was considered erroneous to

Shakers as well as Spiritualists. Theologically, the Shakerism was highly compatible with Spiritualism.50

Prescott and his North Union Society of Believers also commended the

Spiritualists on their reform efforts. The Shakers stood shoulder to shoulder with

Spiritualists who wanted political equality for women and African Americans.

Prescott urged the Spiritualists to incorporate the rights of Native Americans into their reform efforts. The spirits of “aborigines” had visited North Union many times, asking the Society to take up the cause of Native American land rights. Now, with

North Union in decline, Prescott urged the Spiritualist to take up that very cause.

Prescott, however, could not resist the urge to disavow his Spiritualist audience of its notion that Shakers were friends of Spiritualism. One issue prevented

Prescott from fully supporting the formation of Spiritualist orthodoxy. “There is one thing, however, that we can never unite with among the Spiritualists – that is ‘war’, bloody ‘war’!” Prescott sat approvingly as the Fourth National Convention denied the divinity of Christ. He seconded ideas that all would become gods through spiritual progression. He commended the Spiritualists for their considerable reform achievements – and even urged them to take up more causes. But Prescott and his

North Union Society of Believers would not be party to a convention that was advocating war with the United States.51

50 Sally Kitch, Chaste Liberation: Celibacy and Female Cultural Status (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989): 79-80. 51 Child, “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867, 1. 45 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

CHAPTER III

“May You Be In Heaven Just Three Weeks Before the Devil Knows You Are Dead” Radicalism, Non-Resistance, and the Christian Amendment

O Caroline, Caroline, child of the sun, We can never forget that our hearts have been one, — Our foreheads both sprinkled in Liberty’s name, From the fountain of blood with the finger of flame! —Oliver Wendell Holmes

The most contentious issue discussed at the Fourth National Convention of

Spiritualists was the proposed Christian Amendment to the United States

Constitution. While debating the tone of the Spiritualists’ official response to the proposal, two schools of thought emerged. One group, led by pacifist reformer

Henry C. Wright, interpreted Spiritualism as a loose, decentralized philosophy under which various reform movements could find inspiration. The second group, led by

Andrew Jackson Davis, regarded Spiritualism as a religion, and was willing to engage the United States in a civil war to protect the sanctity of its religious practices. The debates over the Spiritualist response to the Christian Amendment mark the second process of alienation within postwar Spiritualism. On the first day of the convention, a prominent and influential voice within the Fourth National

Convention had alienated the Spiritualists that still maintained loyalties to

Christianity, flatly denying them a voice in the future of Spiritualism in America. On the second day, that voice grew louder and boldly alienated those among them whose commitments to non-resistance or moderate politics trumped their

46 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 commitment to Spiritualism. These processes of alienation redefined the nature of

American Spiritualism, created a new theological and political orthodoxy within the movement, and contributed to Spiritualism becoming considered occult by the moral establishment.

The Christian Amendment had first been proposed at the height of the Civil

War, four years prior to the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists. On

February 3, 1863, a small group of clerical leaders and laypersons representing eleven denominations met in Xenia, Ohio to discuss the perilous state in which the nation found itself. The Civil War was entering its twenty-second month and casualties continued to mount. The convention found its rallying cry in an address given by a local lawyer on the second day “in which the sins of the nation were confessed, and the importance of repentance and reformation insisted upon.”1

Unbeknownst to the Xenia convention, another similar meeting was taking place in

Sparta, Illinois. Both conventions arrived at the same conclusion: the Civil War was divine punishment for a nation that had strayed from its God. On May 8, both conventions (now made aware of one another’s presence) met in Pittsburgh to remedy the problem. The collapse of the Union had been caused, the argued, by the

“original sin” committed at the founding of the United States: the founders had not explicitly recognized the supreme authority of God over the affairs of world

1 David McAllister, “The Origin and Progress of the Movement for the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States,” in Proceedings of the National Convention to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, February 4, 5, 1874. With an Account of the Origin and Progress of the Movement (Philadelphia: Christian Statesman Association, 1874): 4. 47 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 governments. 2 The scourge of slavery and the horrors of civil war were God’s divine wrath against a society that had rested on the arrogance of Enlightenment political thought rather than submitted to divine authority.3 The remedy, argued the NAAC, was to add the following words to the preamble:

We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Ruler among nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union.…4

While the NAAC viewed the Civil War as divine punishment, it also viewed the conflict as an opportunity to further entrench the political power of what historian

David Sehat has labeled the “moral establishment” against the increasing secularization of American legal thought and the increasing political influence of

Mormons, Catholics, and secularists. 5

The Pittsburgh convention established three committees: one to draft a new preamble to the United States constitution that submitted the nation to God, a second to draft a petition to present to Congress, and a third to meet with President

Lincoln to lobby for the amendment. By 1864, all three committees had completed their work. In February of that year, the lobbying committee, which consisted mainly of clerical leaders, Princeton theologians, and congressional chaplains, met

2 McAllister, Proceedings, 1-2. 3 Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865-1920 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002): 21-30. 4 Foster, Moral Reconstruction, 22. 5 David Sehat, The Myth of American Religious Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 176–177. Sehat is writing about the National Reform Association (NRA), a later incarnation of the National Association for the Amendment of the Constitution (NAAC). 48 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 with Lincoln. The president was sympathetic to the petition, and he assured the delegates from the NAAC that he would take action to rectify the country’s “original sin” as soon as possible. Undoubtedly Lincoln was busy enough during the winter of

1864 and no further action was taken on the Christian Amendment during Lincoln’s administration.6 The Christian Amendment reached national prominence a year later when Charles Sumner presented the group’s proposal before the Senate.

Though the Senate never voted on the proposed changes, Sumner’s wholehearted approval of the Christian Amendment captured the attention of America’s moral establishment.

Many Protestant denominations voiced their support for the proposal. The

German Reformed Messenger urged that a “hearty effort should be made towards its accomplishment,” because such an amendment would be fitting with the nation’s founding as a haven for the religiously persecuted.7 The unofficial organ of

American Congregationalists was confident that the amendment would pass, as long as American Christians of all denominations made their preferences known.8 Even such non-mainstream groups as John Humphrey Noyes’s perfectionist Oneida community voiced their support for the amendment, pointing out that no wording within the amendment should be offensive to any Roman Catholic or Protestant

6 Ibid. 7 “The Proposed Amendment to the Constitution,” German Reformed Messenger 30, Issue 17, page 2. December 28, 1864. 8 John L. Jenkins, “The Christian Constitutional Amendment,” The Independent: Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts, March 9, 1865, 1. 49 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 groups and that, if both groups worked together, should pass easily.9 The

Spiritualists had a less favorable view of the proposal, and the vociferousness with which Spiritualists opposed the measure reveals the extent to which the movement had drifted from the moral establishment that supported the measurement.

The Spiritualist response to the Christian Amendment was the product of the previous year’s convention. The Third National Convention of Spiritualists took place in August of 1866 in Providence, Rhode Island. On the whole, the convention was benign. Much of the conversation centered on the establishment and propagation of Spiritualist Progressive Lyceums to compete with and ultimately supplant sectarian Sunday Schools as the primary venues of education for America’s youth. Two events that took place at the Third National Convention were noteworthy because they set the stage for the transition from a sectarian religious tradition to an emergent religious tradition that would take place a year later: the establishment of a committee of well-respected Spiritualist leaders to investigate the veracity of spirit manifestations such as apparitions and spectral voices (which will be addressed in chapter three) and the National Convention’s response to the proposed Christian Amendment.10 That response was anything but moderate.

Selden J. Finney was chosen by the Third National Convention to write a response to the Christian Amendment to “the citizens of the American Republic.”11

Whereas Finney’s theological convictions represented an increasingly untenable

9 “Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” The Circular 4, Issue 48, 383. 10 “The Late National Convention,” Banner of Light, September 8, 1866, page 4. 11 Selden J. Finney, “Address of the Third National Spiritualist Convention to the Citizens of the American Republic,” Banner of Light, August 17, 1867, 1. 50 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 moderation, his rhetoric in response to the Christian Amendment was shocking in its acrimony:

Before we, as Spiritualists, will consent to have the infallibility of the Bible, the deity of Jesus, and the political authority of these quondam ‘friends of God’ crammed down our souls, as part of the Constitution of our Republic, we will fight ‘till the buzzards are gorged with spoil,’ and of this we give ample notice.12

Finney’s editorial was published in the Banner of Light on August 17, 1867 — just eighteen days before the convention began. It was published in most major newspapers soon thereafter. American readers certainly recognized the line from

Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “Brother Jonathan’s Lament for Sister Caroline.” In the poem, Holmes’s Jonathan character mourns the loss of his sister Caroline who represents the secession South Carolina. Holmes is mourning the loss of the Union.

He vividly portrays the horrors of war brought about by Nature’s “petulant children.” Finney’s use of Holmes’s poem makes clear to his audience the adoption of the Christian Amendment would once again fracture the Union.

When the National Convention of Spiritualists reconvened a year later at the

Fourth National Convention, Finney’s editorial, and the media’s incredulity towards it, was a much-discussed issue. To some at the convention, the controversy was an embarrassment. This group understood Spiritualism to be an intentionally vague philosophy that allowed for a number of reform movements and other philosophies to operate beneath its guidance. It was hardly worth going to war over. While this group disagreed with the premise of the Christian Amendment, the suggestion that

American Spiritualists would take up arms against their government was ludicrous.

12 Ibid. 51 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

To understand this interpretation of Spiritualism, it is useful to consider the path

Henry C. Wright took to become to most vocal advocate for pacifists within the movement.

Henry Clarke Wright was everything one might expect a Spiritualist to be. He was a passionate reformer, a political progressive, and a consummate spiritual eclectic. Wright seemed to be the quintessential Spiritualist. His Spiritualism was born out of a commitment to reform and his progressive theology originated in a not uncommon discontentment with Calvinism. He was fiercely committed to the various social reforms we associate with Spiritualism.13 His involvement at the

Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists, however, reveals the depth of a power struggle within the post-bellum Spiritualist movement and lends insight into the evolving nature of the movement’s alignment with broader American culture.

Henry Wright became a Christian during a revival in upstate New York in

1817. Wright emerged from this burned-over revivalism with a strict Calvinist theology that he developed further at Andover Theological Seminary.14 Upon graduating, he became the pastor of First Church in West Newbury, Massachusetts.

Along with his appointment came the respectable social standing befitting a well- educated member of the east coast clergy. Wright spent a decade enjoying the delights of high society while fighting the scourges of Harvard Unitarianism, illiteracy, and sundry vices of the lower classes. By the 1830s, though, Wright had

13 Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth- Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 56-81. 14 Lewis Perry, Childhood, Marriage, and Reform: Henry Clarke Wright 1797-1870 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 81-82. 52 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 begun to grow restless for a life of heroic service to God — a life he found by becoming an itinerant lecturer in addition to his pastoring duties. Soon, his fatalistic

Calvinism was tempered by a reform-oriented premillennialist revivalism. 15

In the late 1830s, Wright took leave from his congregation and joined the

American Sunday School Union. In what would become a lifetime of revolving personal crusades, Wright gained notoriety fighting against Horace Mann and future

Spiritualist John Pierpont’s efforts to secularize schoolbooks. Wright soon lost interest in the Sunday School Movement and briefly crusaded for women’s rights, marriage reform, and lyceums before getting caught up in the rising tide of abolitionism. His growing discontentment with the peculiar institution inspired him to abandon the ministry entirely in favor of a career as a social reformer. Wright had opposed slavery since his days at Andover, but during his tenure as a clergyman he refused to support any immediate action to end slavery. He, like many progressive clergymen in the 1830s, feared that an aggressive campaign for immediate emancipation would be too divisive and might splinter American Christians, distracting them from their true mission. Wright credited William Lloyd Garrison for forcing him off the sidelines. Garrison’s uncompromising advocacy of immediate abolition and unwavering ethics won Wright over, and soon Wright delved headlong into the other various reforms identified with Garrison’s Boston ultraism. Wright and the rest of the well-to-do but discontented New England Christian reformers

15 Perry, Childhood, Marriage, and Reform, 56. 53 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 were exposed to temperance, women’s rights, utopian socialism, dress reform, and

Spiritualism through Garrison’s The Liberator.16

By 1853, Wright was the de facto Spiritualism correspondent for The

Liberator. Like many Antebellum Spiritualists, Wright took the possibility of spirit communication and mediumship for granted, assuming the Rochester Rappings were just the first manifestations of a new scientific possibility.17 Wright’s editorials in The Liberator show a clear evolution in Wright’s perception of Christianity.

Wright conflated the evils of the slaveholding south with Christian theology. As the sectional crisis deepened, so did Wright’s discontentment with Christianity. At a convention in Ohio in 1853, Wright “[showed] the worthlessness and wickedness of

… a Gospel, a Christianity, a Christ, a Government, and a God, that [passed] by on the other side, [leaving] the millions of American slaves, fallen among Republican and

Christian thieves, to perish in their blood.”18 Clearly, Wright’s patience with

Christianity was wearing thin. In 1857, he published Errors of the Bible, a 118-page polemic against Christianity. In addition to raising well-worn questions of theodicy and Old Testament violence, Wright flatly denies the virgin birth, the divinity of

Christ, the divine inspiration of the Bible, and other tenets of Christian belief.19 By the mid 1850s, Wright had come to view Spiritualism as an all-inclusive, standalone

16 Dan McKanan, Dan, Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002): 58. 17 Henry C. Wright, “Spiritual Convention,” The Liberator, April 22, 1858, pg. 64. 18 Henry C. Wright, “The Death of the Union – The Birth or a Northern Confederacy,” The Liberator, August 14, 1857, pg. 132. 19 Henry C. Wright, The Errors of the Bible: Deomonstrated by the Truths of Nature; or, Man’s only Infallible Rule of Faith and Practice (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1858): 32-37, 70-84. 54 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 philosophy that obviated religion of any kind.20 On theological matters, Wright should have been a powerful force in Andrew Jackson Davis’s nascent orthodoxy. If emergent Spiritualism was determined to draw a clear distinction between

Spiritualism and Christianity, a high-profile former clergyman with sharp mind, a ready audience, and an axe to grind should have proven to be a powerful ally for

Davis’s growing coalition. However, a contentious political issue drove a wedge between emergent Spiritualism’s two most powerful men, leaving one in sole control of a powerful and influential intellectual elite and the other on the outside looking in.

By the time Wright arrived at the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists in October of 1867, he was poised to challenge Andrew Jackson Davis for the leadership of the hearts and minds of America’s Spiritualist elite. As Ann Braude points out, as an author Wright was “second in popularity only to Andrew Jackson

Davis among Spiritualist readers.”21 He was also a prolific public speaker, an adept organizer, a powerful personality, and a formidable obstacle to Andrew Jackson

Davis’s political goals. Andrew Jackson Davis knew this. However, Wright fundamentally misinterpreted the nature of Spiritualism. His commitment was to reform, not to the new religion that was being created at the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists.

Illinois delegate E.V. Wilson also misunderstood the degree to which a forming Spiritualist orthodoxy was transforming the loose, inclusive nature of

20 E.W. Twing, “Lectures of Henry C. Wright,” The Liberator, January 4, 1856, pg. 26. 21 Braude, Radical Spirits, 63. 55 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 antebellum Spiritualism into an exclusive, emergent movement. On the second morning of the convention, he introduced a resolution clarifying the Spiritualist stance on war and insurrection. Though Wilson shared Wright’s unfavorable opinion of the Christian Amendment, (he called it “obnoxious”) he wanted to insure the citizens of the United States that the Spiritualists were a peaceful, law-abiding group of reformers who, while disagreeing with the premise of the amendment, would never resort to violence to resolve their differences.22 Wilson was embarrassed by Finney’s editorial and the reaction it received nationwide.

Unsurprisingly, the newspapers delighted in reprinting Finney’s threat. The Salt

Lake Daily Telegraph called it a “terrible threat,” urging that such a fight “would be terrible for the buzzards.”23 The Chicago Tribune chalked the whole controversy up to a mere ornithological disagreement: “One of the speakers…said that the principal objection to the address was the buzzard. He wished to repudiate that fowl. The convention, however, insisted on the buzzard, and laid the resolution on the table.”24

While journalists did not take the Spiritualist threat seriously, residents of

Wilson’s home state certainly did. Wilson reported before the convention that he had been asked repeatedly to clarify the Spiritualists’ intentions. At a local level, the prospect of another armed insurrection must have seemed demoralizing just two years after the Civil War. Wilson’s proposed resolution took advantage of this timing in an attempt to urge calm between the Spiritualists and Christian America by

22 Banner of Light, October 19, 1867, page 1. 23 Salt Lake Daily Telegraph, October 23, 1867, issue 95 column B “A Terrible Threat” 24 “The Spiritualists” Chicago Tribune, September 7, 1867, page 2. 56 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 playing on a nearly universal sense of tragedy that grew out of the Civil War: “And after the experience of rebellion, blood and suffering which we have witnessed for the last few years, it hardly becomes us, as good citizens and professed reformers, to threaten the wickedness of war as a remedy for grievances real or imaginary.”25 To

Wilson and Wright, pacifism and non-resistance were preconditions of Spiritualism.

This was not a popular sentiment among the delegates of the Fourth National

Convention. In fact, Wright and Wilson found that the rest of the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists had very little patience for their Pollyannaish commitment to non-resistance.

Rhode Island delegate L.K. Joslin spoke first for the majority position. Though he (wisely) did not wish to dive headlong into an armed conflict with the United

States government, Joslin argued that Wright and Wilson’s insistence that

Spiritualism was, above all, a commitment to reform was a mischaracterization of the movement. Joslin recognized that Spiritualism was a religion, and this shaped his opinion of Finney’s threatening editorial. If Spiritualism was more than a commitment to reform, guided and inspired by spirits, it was worth going to war to protect. Joslin expressed what must have been a common sentiment among

Americans in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War when he said asked of his fellow delegates, “Have we not had enough of tears and blood? What family circle is there that has not lost some member? Are there not enough of human bones yet bleaching upon the Southern soil?”26 Joslin urged the convention to consider a

25 Ibid. 26 Banner of Light, Oct 19, page 1. 57 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 peaceful response if the Christian Amendment were passed, but insisted that

Finney’s threat should stand as the Spiritualists’ response. The nature of American society, argued Joslin, meant that war must be an option when confronting “evil in religion or in politics.”27 The Christian Amendment, according to the delegates, would have meant the end to both religion and free politics in the United States.

Both Joslin and Wilson held similar commitments to non-resistance, but their different understandings of the nature of Spiritualism kept them from agreeing on

Wilson’s peace resolution. The ways in which Spiritualists understood their own movement determined their priorities. The delegates of the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists thought the Christian Amendment to the United States

Constitution would mean the end of their movement. If the moral establishment received constitutional sanction, they believed, those groups that stood in opposition to that moral establishment would no longer be able to exist peacefully.

The debates over the Spiritualist response to the Christian Amendment forced a choice for the delegates. Either they were in favor of Finney’s editorial and the prospect of igniting another civil war against the United States in order to ensure

Spiritualism’s survival or they were against the editorial and had betrayed

Spiritualism by believing pacifism trumped their commitment to Spiritualism. Those who chose the latter would follow Spiritualism as it broke further from the moral establishment, further fracturing the movement’s alignment with American culture.

Those who chose the former would find themselves on the outside of the movement looking in.

27 Ibid. 58 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

The lack of support for Wright and Wilson’s pacifism seems out of character for Spiritualism. Much of the historiography of American Spiritualism highlights the reform-centeredness of the movement and emphasizes its origins in peace traditions such as Quakerism and Swedenborgianism.28 While speaking on behalf of

Finney’s editorial, Connecticut delegate Andrew Foss offered a glimpse into the impact of the Civil War on Spiritualist peace ideology.

Foss, like Wright, came to Spiritualism through reform. He once shared

Wright’s commitment to non-resistance, but abandoned that principle when he confronted the horrors of slavery. In April of 1851, Foss joined many of his fellow abolitionists as they gathered before dawn to watch as Thomas Sims, a twenty-three year old escaped slave, was loaded aboard a ship ready to set sail to Georgia to return Sims into slavery.29 For the past week, Boston’s abolitionists had tried in vain to secure Sims’s release either through judicial means or by facilitating his escape from his cell in the Boston Court House. Sims was one of the first victims of the

Fugitive Slave Law, and as such, was unable to defend himself in court. Foss could only scream epithets at the three hundred policemen and volunteers that had gathered to escort Sims to the awaiting ship. Boston’s abolitionists had tried every peaceful recourse at their disposal to prevent Sims from being returned to slavery, but they failed.

As the ship left Boston harbor, Foss began to realize what the nation was beginning to realize: the prospect of finding a peaceful solution to the issue of

28 Braude, Radical Spirits, 56-81. 29 Leonard W. Levy, “Sims’ Case: The Fugitive Slave Law in Boston in 1851,” Journal of Negro History 35 (1) (1950): 69-72. 59 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 slavery was becoming dimmer by the month. Foss abandoned all pretensions towards non-resistance. When the Civil War broke out, Foss was too old to fight, but his only son enlisted and died in battle. Foss addressed the convention with the moral authority of someone who had directly suffered in the recent war. Even though the defense of Spiritualism from the Christian Amendment was worthy of the deaths of a thousand of his sons.30 The climax of Foss’s speech captures well the sincerity of the Spiritualists’ threat of war: “I don’t believe in preparing for war; I am opposed to all military schools; but I say that when the time comes that we must give up our liberties or fight, I will inaugurate a school myself. I will drill the boys in the morning, and fight in the afternoon.”31 Spiritualism, to Foss, was a religion – the most supreme of all religions; and it was worth dying for. Emergent Spiritualism was a religious movement forged in the fires of civil war, and this experience turned many Spiritualists away from their antebellum commitment to pacifism. Foss’s support for Finney’s violent language stemmed from his conception of Spiritualism as a movement. If the Christian Amendment was to be adopted, Spiritualists should be prepared to fight: “I say that the man who will not fight for his rights is not worth of the blessing.” To Foss, Spiritualism was his religion. Therefore, it was perfectly appropriate for a group that valued pacifism to fight to protect itself from tyranny.32

To Wright and his small faction of pacifists, this line of thinking conflicted not only with their moral beliefs, but also with their understanding of the movement to which they belonged. Wilson referred to Spiritualism as a commitment to universal

30 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 19, 1. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 60 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 reform.33 Wright repeatedly characterized his involvement in Spiritualism as another one of his many reform efforts.34 He did not conceive of Spiritualism as a religion, in and of itself. To many of the delegates of the convention, however,

Spiritualism was a religion. This has significant ramifications for Spiritualism’s evolving social alignment with postbellum American culture.

Foss’s impassioned speech in favor of Finney’s threatening editorial belied the fact that he viewed the whole controversy as contrived. Foss felt as if the suddenly vocal faction of pacifists was raising concerns over the language contained in Finney’s editorial only to stall the progress being made by an increasingly acquiescent majority. Foss saw that two factions were forming. The majority of delegates were supportive of Finney’s editorial. They believed that war was the necessary response to a piece of legislation would mark the end of religious freedom in the United States. However, he believed that Wright and Wilson’s opposition to

Finney’s threat was a concealed challenge for the leadership of this evolving institution. Foss charged “that pestilent fellow Henry C. Wright,” with feigning a commitment to pacifism in order to stall the proceedings of the convention because he felt Andrew Jackson Davis was wielding too much influence in the organization.35

Selden Finney, the author of the Spiritualist response to the Christian

Amendment proposal, seconded Foss’s accusations against Wright. He accused

Wright and Wilson of being so “debased that they will stand still before the bigoted sectarians and allow them to determine on what conditions they shall be allowed to

33 Ibid. 34 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 26, 1867, 1. 35 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 19, 1867, 1. 61 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 cast the ballot and to hold office.”36 He also accused Wright of hypocrisy. According to Finney, Wright had urged men to fight against the confederacy. Wright interrupted Finney to repudiate the claim. Finney then suggested that if such a time would come that “every blessing that peace can claim is blotted out by the iron hand of oligarchical power,” both Wright and Henry Lloyd Garrison would happily take up arms.37

While delegate after delegate rose to deliver an ad hominem attack against

Wright and his vocal faction of pacifists, Wright, himself, was struggling in vain to be recognized by the president of the convention. By the time Illinois delegate J.S.

Loveland took the floor in opposition to the non-resistant proposal, momentum had begun to shift squarely in the favor of the forming orthodoxy. To Loveland, Wright,

Joslin, and Wilson’s commitment to non-resistance was a matter of identity. They were not Spiritualists. Loveland imagined a nation full of Spiritualists ready to take up arms against their government in the name of Spiritualism. Anyone who would not do so was not a Spiritualist.38 Loveland introduced yet another boundary to the forming orthodoxy. After the first day of the convention, being a “Spiritualist” had theological connotations that it did not have before the Civil War. During the debates over the Spiritualist response to the Christian Amendment, being a

“Spiritualist” acquired a political connotation as well. Non-resistance was heterodox.

36 Ibid. 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid. 62 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Militancy in the face of what was imagined to be “the most relentless tyranny that the world has ever seen” was orthodox.39

Clearly, the Fourth National Convention had already made up its mind in support of Finney’s editorial. It was up to Charles Finney himself to lay the issue to rest. Finney joined Foss in leveling accusations at Henry C. Wright. Finney insinuated that Wright knew full well that Finney had been given carte blanche to write the editorial for the Banner of Light. Furthermore, Finney believed that Wright would indeed resort to fighting if the Christian Amendment were to be adopted – a charge Wright fervently denied, retorting, “I do not believe that any institution or government is worth the killing of one human being.”40 Andrew Foss rose next to propose that the motion be laid on the table. His proposal was approved. Finney’s fiery editorial would stand as the convention’s definitive response to the Christian

Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Fortunately for Wright, he was on the docket to deliver an address the following morning. After the heated debates over the Christian Amendment, Wright scrapped whatever address he had prepared and instead launched a tirade against the new Spiritualist orthodoxy from which he was being increasingly alienated. A highly indignant Wright spoke for several minutes about the indignities he had suffered in his three days at the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists. The

“Convention and its members” had insulted Wright’s manhood, and had spoken

39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 63 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 about him with “biting sarcasm” and “venomous innuendo.”41 The convention tolerated Wright’s outburst until he made it personal by turning the focus of his vitriol towards his “enemy” Andrew Jackson Davis, who, according to Wright, had

“[caricatured] my self-sacrificing spirit, and [made] fun of my principle that teaches me to suffer rather than inflict suffering, and to return good for evil, and forgive as I would be forgiven.” Andrew Jackson Davis lept to his feet in his own defense, but

Wright had him right where he wanted him. The day before when Wright wanted to interrupt a speaker to defend his own views he was not allowed. Wright reminded his illustrious “enemy” of the rules of the convention, and Davis returned to his seat.

Wright returned to his prepared remarks and listed, for several minutes, the disrespect that he had received at the hands of Davis and his coterie – all the while reminding his audience that he was far too spiritually progressed to mention those indignities. Wright reported that he had heard Davis said a sarcastic prayer for him in which he said, “May you be in heaven just three weeks before the devil knows you are dead. Amen!”42 Wright concluded his speech by urging his fellow Spiritualists to adopt a more cooperative spirit while interacting with one another. He must have known, though, that he was no longer addressing his “fellow” Spiritualists. After he ended his speech, Henry C. Wright left the convention and left town.

Wright’s dramatic speech is a very significant moment in the process of creating a new, emergent Spiritualism. With Henry C. Wright’s exit from the convention, Davis had secured the second facet of his Spiritualist orthodoxy. The

41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 64 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritualism Davis had in mind would be a small, well-educated elite group of like- minded Spiritualists, united in a common theology and a shared political radicalism.

However, as with the formation of the theological orthodoxy, Davis sacrificed a substantial degree of cultural alignment while alienating those outside of his new coalition. On a small scale, Wright’s exit from the convention symbolized the new heights of alienation Davis brought about by defining and securing his orthodoxy.

On a broader scale, Spiritualism in postbellum America became further defined with radical politics.

Rejection of society is a hallmark of emergent religious traditions, as defined by Bromley and Melton. Unlike the antebellum (sectarian) era of Spiritualism which imagined itself as a new dispensation of Christianity, emergent Spiritualism in the postbellum period rejected the idea that they were heirs to any preexisting religious tradition.43 Davis did not want Spiritualism to be culturally palatable. He wanted his movement to be revolutionary. He viewed himself not as an evangelist of a new spiritual dispensation, but as a subversive. His group, he believed, would be capable of bringing about radical change on a global scale if only they could rid the world of bigotry, injustice, and religion. More practically, by cutting ties with broader

American culture, Davis was able to consolidate authority for himself within his new organization. As previously mentioned, Wright entered the convention as Davis’s chief rival for the de facto leadership of Spiritualism. After only two days, he was hounded into leaving. Wright maintained his prominence with the thousands of

American Spiritualists who attended his lectures and read his books, but to the core

43 Bromley, “Reconceptualizing,” 19. 65 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 of Spiritualists who took it upon themselves remake Spiritualism as a smaller, more exclusive movement, Wright had lost all credibility.

When Henry C. Wright left the convention, Davis’s Spiritualist orthodoxy was born. In the first day of the convention, a prominent and influential voice within the

Fourth National Convention had alienated the Spiritualists that still maintained loyalties to Christianity, flatly denying them a voice in the future of Spiritualism in

America. On the second day, that voice grew louder and boldly alienated those among them whose commitments to non-resistance or moderate politics trumped their commitment to Spiritualism. Having defeated his ideological foe and cleansed the movement of its Pollyannaish antebellum characteristics, Andrew Jackson Davis went about the process of building a new Spiritualism in his image.

66 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

CHAPTER IV

THE AESTHETICS OF EMERGENT SPIRITUALISM

By the third day of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists, the movement had been fundamentally changed in two ways. First, an orthodox theology had been created. The new Spiritualist orthodoxy drew from esoteric religious traditions and metaphysical cosmology to create a new theology that stood opposed to the Protestant moral establishment that defined normative religious culture in mid-nineteenth century America. Secondly, the political consensus that was reached amidst the debates over the Christian Amendment established the priorities that a Spiritualist should hold. Spiritualism and its political, cultural, social, and theological end-goals had to be the foremost principle in a Spiritualist’s life. The boundaries were set. Theologically, any lingering commitment to or hopes of reconciliation with Christianity was heterodox. Politically, any commitment to pacifism or non-resistance at the (perceived) cost of Spiritualism’s survival in

America was an untenable position. With these boundaries in place, Andrew Jackson

Davis and his coalition began constructing a new Spiritualism out of the old.

Whereas antebellum Spiritualism was a loose, inclusive umbrella under which various theological beliefs and reform movements could draw inspiration, this new era of emergent Spiritualism was to be a well-defined, hierarchical organization capable of enacting wholesale institutional reform on a global scale.

This process of orthodoxy formation highlights the paradox inherent in this critical juncture in the history of American Spiritualism. While the delegates of the

67 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists decried sectarianism, they recognized the naturalness and inevitability of organization and structure. While they deplored dogma, they recognized the need to have a unifying set of beliefs that would serve to separate true Spiritualists from those only interested in its phenomenal manifestations. Regardless of the level of success Davis and his coalition attained in each of these goals, it is worthwhile to examine what this new era of Spiritualism would look like. After all, the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists provides an in-depth examination of a group transitioning to an emergent religious tradition.

While this group of Spiritualists would not have used those terms, they seem to be well aware that they were bringing about a new movement at the cost of

“compatibility with the dominant culture.”1

With a theological orthodoxy formed and a political consensus reached, the delegates spent the remainder of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists building a new religious movement. Now that Christians and the politically moderate were alienated from the movement, three proposals ensured that those processes of alienation were translated into the streamlined, hierarchical organization the Spiritualist orthodoxy envisioned.

Pennsylvania delegate Michael Dyott, a Philadelphia maker of lamps and chandeliers, first addressed the convention on Wednesday afternoon. In his address,

Dyott proposed two resolutions that are highly symbolic of this transition period in

American Spiritualism. First, he proposed that a committee be created and charged

1 David G. Bromley and J. Gordon Melton, “Reconceptualizing Types of Religious Organization: Dominant, Sectarian, Alternative, and Emergent Tradition Groups,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15 (3) (2012), 7. 68 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 with the task of creating a badge or breastpin that Spiritualists could wear on their clothing so that “they may recognize each other.”2 That resolution was promptly adopted and the committee went to work designing the emblem of this new era of

Spiritualism. The next day, that committee unveiled its design, a triumphal sun rising over menacing dark clouds that envelop the American flag. All of this is under large block letters that read “PROGRESSION.”3

The badge was evocative and unambiguous in its symbolism. Dyott, speaking on behalf of the Committee on Badges, explained the intended message of the badge.

The background was pure white silver, representing the unsullied purity of the spiritual philosophy. The stars that flanked the word “PROGRESSION” represented mastery of the mysteries of the universe that Spiritualism provides. There are no more mysteries in the cosmos – they had all been or all would be revealed. The sun represented truth “rising above and dissipating the clouds of error.” Dyott also imagined that the sun represented a “golden target” for these erroneous philosophies to fruitlessly attack. The invited ecclesiastics and old theologians to direct their “intellectual arrows” towards the triumphant sun so that they may be shown powerless to stop the spiritual progress that was illuminating the world.

Michael Dyott was fond of imagining Spiritualism as a dominating social, cultural,

2 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 12, 1867, 1. 3 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 2, 1867 1-2. 69 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Figure 1

The badge proposed by M.B. Dyott. This badge is the one to be worn by Spiritualists actively involved in the Lyceum movement and any others who wanted to show support for the cause. A separate badge, based on a similar design was also presented before the convention. This second badge, for Spiritualists not actively associated with the Lyceum, replaced the word “LYCEUM” with “Progression” and emphasized the American flag – a symbol meant to imply the dominance of spiritual progression (represented by the rising sun) over worldly social systems (represented by the American flag).

70 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 and religious system that would soon conquer every corner of the globe. His interpretation of the Spiritualist badge reveals this inclination.4

The American Flag is a symbol of cultural imperialism in Dyott’s interpretation of the Spiritualist badge. As shown in chapter two, the delegates of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists had a contentious relationship with the United States as an agent of what David Sehat has called the “moral establishment” – a theologically indistinct but politically active Protestant normative culture.5 The United States was also a powerful symbol of Spiritualist domination. Dyott’s imagined a future for Spiritualism that was very similar to an imperialist imagination for the future of America. Knowledge of the new Spiritual dispensation, Dyott argued, “protection and freedom” would emanate from the

United States to “an admiring world.” The flag represented the global aspirations of this newly streamlined Spiritualist movement and reflected nineteenth-century

American attitudes towards the superiority of American culture. It is an even more powerful symbol when one considers that the Spiritualists of the Fourth National

Convention viewed themselves as outside of the normative American culture. The

Dyott imagined the American Flag in the Spiritualist badge as having first been conquered by Spiritualism. Then, once the United States was thoroughly Spiritualist,

Dyott combined the widespread cultural imperialism of the day with the aspirations of this new religious movement.6

4 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 2, 1867, pg. 2. 5 Sehat, Myth of American Religious Freedom, 176-177. 6 John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction (London: Printer Publisher, Ltd., 1991): 23-28. 71 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

The fact that a movement as inclusive as Spiritualism had been prior to the

Civil War would move to establish such a stark symbolic boundary illustrates the naturalness and inevitability of the community formation process. From its inception, Spiritualism was treated as a new dispensation of humanity – one that was open and accessible to all. Over time, however, those who had more-ready access to the spirit world were elevated to a special status: medium. While the ability to communicate with spirits was reserved for a select few, access to the mediums was open to all. With this badge, however, the delegates of the Fourth

National Convention of Spiritualists marked a change in thought that was representative of the changes underway in the movement. After 1867, Spiritualism became a closed community. Prior to 1867, anyone who owned a table could hold a séance. Anyone who carved a planchette could communicate with the deceased. Just as other religious communities had their processes of initiation – baptism, conversions, communion rituals, etc. – the badge to be worn by Spiritualists represented a formalized symbolic boundary to inclusion in the newly formed

Spiritualist community, built around the ideology of the newly formed Spiritualist orthodoxy.

The badge was approved quite easily. There was, however, one vocal critic of the proposal. Rhode Island delegate L.K. Joslin argued that a badge was contrary to the nature of Spiritualism, which he viewed as a “broad, free, generous movement” that invited “all men and women.”7 An increase in “ceremonials” only serves to cut off a movement from those outside of it. He argued that a true Spiritualist should be

7 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 12, 1867. 72 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 known by his deeds, not by any emblems. Furthermore, Joslin argued that increased ceremonials were emblematic of a larger problem with organized religion. Many organizations and sects adopt badges and emblems as a way of placating their member’s need to belong to something. Joslin believed these ceremonials paved the way for the culture of complacency and hypocrisy that he noticed in organized religion. If a Spiritualist were judged by his or her life, he would not be able to hide behind a badge.8

Dyott’s second resolution tested the limits of the convention’s increasingly sectarian mood. He suggested the Spiritualists form a secret society following the model of the Masons and the Odd Fellows. This secret society, the United Order of

Spiritual Progress, would function in two ways. First, it would be a charitable organization that could “spread the branches over the empire of the earth, and become a power in the land that shall rear majestic temples in every city and town of our beloved country, and enlist the noble women of our race, as well as the noble men, in the holy cause of alleviating distress, elevating human character, raising the fallen, ministering at the couch of sickness and suffering, soothing the sorrows of the bereaved, caring for and educating the orphan.”9 Secondly, the society would serve as the primary organizing vehicle for American Spiritualism. Proponents of the

United Order of Spiritual Progress argued that the political and social goals of

Spiritualism could not be fully implemented without a strong, top-down organization to bring them to fruition. Mrs. E.C. Clark, a member of the Ohio

8 Ibid. 9 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867. 73 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 delegation best captured this sentiment when she pointed to the success of the

Roman Catholic Church: “Do you know why the Catholic Church wields so much power? It is simply because she has a great organization.”10 Clark and most of her fellow delegates believed that a strong hierarchy and a well-defined organizational structure would allow Spiritualists to exact even more influence in global affairs than the Catholics.

Dyott cautioned that the society he was proposing would not make the same mistakes other secret societies had made. For example, the United Order of Spiritual

Progress would not share the Odd Fellows or the Mason Order’s affection for ritualism and Old Testament imagery. The United Order of Spiritual Progress would incorporate members of other religious denominations. As long as they shared the

Spiritualist’s zeal for reform and spiritual progress, Dyott argued, they would be welcomed into the organization. Even those “poor benighted Orthodox-church creedists, priest, or preacher of fire and brimstone” would be allowed to join. Dyott was sure that the beauty of the Spiritualist ceremonies and the undeniable truth of

Spiritualism would be enough to life these misguided souls out of the “darkness that

[had] so long enshrouded them.”11

Fitting with Spiritualism’s strong affinity for women’s rights reform, the

United Order of Spiritual Progress would be open to women. Dyott’s defense of this proposed policy – though he hardly needed one with this group – was that a gender- integrated alternative to the Odd Fellows and Masons would attract non-Spiritualist

10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 74 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 men who refused to leave their wives at home twice a week to socialize with other men. The United Order of Spiritual Progress would satisfy man’s natural inclination to gather in fellowship with other men, while allowing women join their husbands in this fellowship. Unlike the Masons or the Odd Fellows, the United Order would allow husbands and wives to join and attend together. Dyott reiterated a common theme among progressive reform movements in advocating for women to be allowed in the United Order. Women were naturally more inclined to perceive suffering in others and were thus better suited than men to care for the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, and other unfortunate groups that the United Order of

Spiritual Progress was proposed to care for.12

The goals of the United Order resonated with the convention. Warren Chase, one of the most prominent Spiritualist lecturers in the country supported Dyott’s proposal, saying, “Today we are in need of a centralized organization to unite our powers and forces for the accomplishment of further purposes, for the redemption of man, not for this world alone. We, as Spiritualists, feel that Christianity has failed to redeem this world.” Proponents of the United Order of Spiritual Progress argued that Spiritualism, alone, could enact the type of global-scale reform they envisioned.

This could only happen, though, if an organization guided them. Dyott described that sentiment when he said “our forces are disorganized, scattered, and so individualized, that they can accomplish nothing.”13 It is unsurprising that such reformist goals should be well received by the delegates. It is surprising however,

12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 75 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 that the delegates were so receptive to a secret society, “whose business, forms of initiation and means of recognition shall belong to those who choose to unite with it.” Dyott finished his defense of the United Order of Spiritual Progress by imagining a future in which “majestic” Spiritualist temples stood triumphantly above every city and town in the world. This global organization would gather funds from all who chose to embrace the “redemption of man.”14

The United Order of Spiritual Progress would speed the process of global domination by adopting and promoting a universal language. Delegate W.F.

Jamieson urged the convention to consider a new phonetic system of reading and writing that could be universally adopted much more easily than English, making global conquest more feasible. Jamieson was probably referring to Solresol, a language developed in 1827 by a Frenchman named François Sudre. Solresol was based on the seven notes in an octave. In Solresol, words were formed by combining one or more notes from the octave. 15 By using different articulations and combinations, do, re, mi, fa sol, la and ti could form a rudimentary language which

Jamieson claimed could be learned in thirty percent of the time that it takes to become fluent in English.16 If the United Order of Spiritual Progress were truly to become a global institution, it would need to unite all the peoples of the world under a common philosophy, culture, and language. The proposal for the United Order of

14 Ibid. 15 Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language, tr. James Fentress (New York: Blackwell Publishing, 1995), 305-306. 16 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 30, 1867, pg. 1. 76 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritual Progress aroused some opposition from at least one delegate who still viewed Spiritualism as an inclusive philosophy.

Charles Holt, a delegate from Pennsylvania, opposed the creation of the secret society on the grounds that a secret society is the essence of sectarianism.

Holt recalled that the brief history of Spiritualism had been largely defined by fighting against sectarianism. He did not disagree with the stated aims of the United

Order of Spiritual Progress, but questioned whether a secret society – an indisputably unabashed symbolic boundary – was necessary in order to bring those goals to fruition. Holt also suggested that charity inspired by an overarching organization was no charity at all. Caring for the poor, he argued, contributes to a

Spiritualists’ ascent to a higher realm of spirituality. If that charity comes primarily through an organization and not the individual Spiritualist, it will have no such spiritual benefit. As proof, Holt pointed to the example of one of the “great philanthropists of the world,” Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus did not need to belong to a secret society in order to perform his charitable works. As Holt recalled, Jesus gave to the poor in such a way that his left hand was unaware of the actions of the right hand.17 Selden Finney countered Holt’s claim by pointing out the “well known” fact

Jesus did belong to a secret society – the Essenes, a small ascetic Jewish sect, similar in thought and practice to the Apocalyptic Pharisees, that lived along the shores of the Dead Sea.18 Finney, like most of his fellow delegates, believed Holt’s concerns

17 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867, pg. 1. 18 Ralph Marcus, “Pharisees, Essenes, and Gnostics,” Journal of Biblical Liberature 73, no. 3. (1954): 160. 77 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 were unfounded.19 None denied Holt’s claim that a secret society was a clear manifestation of dreaded sectarianism. Simply put, emergent Spiritualism was not as concerned with fighting sectarianism now it was a sect.

Holt’s opposition to the United Order was soon overridden. The prevailing sentiment of the convention was that an organization such as the United Order nothing to be afraid of – it was natural. To Mrs. E.C. Clark, organization and hierarchy were as natural as the human body, “Organization is simply taking a form, and everything in Nature does this.”20 The naturalness defense, which is a common trope in metaphysical religions, was used to defend both the badge and the creation of the United Order.21 The new Spiritualist majority was receptive to organization and emblem, despite Spiritualism’s longstanding opposition to anything associated with sectarianism or ecclesiasticism.

Clark and others argued that a Spiritualist organization need not manifest the type of coerciveness and domination exhibited by other religious movements. Even by having this debate, though, it is clear that the delegates recognize a change has taken place in the nature of the organization. The delegates were no longer debating the ideologies that separated them from religion; they were debating how they could avoid the mistakes of other religions. Philosophies do not require organization. Dispensations require no body. New religions do. Clark did not refute

Holt’s critiques of the United Order. She acknowledged that a secret society would

19 Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867, 1. 20 Ibid. 21 Albanese, Republic of Mind and Spirit, 66-88. 78 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 create boundaries, factions, and sectarianism – but she argued this was a necessary, natural process of community formation.22

Andrew Jackson Davis, who rarely spoke at the convention, threw his considerable influence behind the creation of the United Order of Spiritual Progress and the adoption of the badge. He did so by borrowing Clark’s reasoning:

I am not here to stand up for what has been called ceremonials, rituals, though I believe in them. Why? Because they are natural.… All the flowers of Nature are variegated, because they come from a wiser hand than any Committee of this Convention. All the birds wear badges – they are known by their colors. At a distance you say that all parts of the great institution of things are stamped with their proper colors, with their proper badges, because they belong to a progressive scale of being.23

Davis’s support of the United Order and the Spiritualist badge all but ensured both measures would pass. He was also acting pragmatically. A Spiritualist of his renown would undoubtedly have some sort of leadership position in this new organization.

More importantly, Davis and Clark’s defense of religious organization and community formation reveals a great deal about the nature of Spiritualism’s shift to an emergent alignment with broader culture. Along with the processes of alienation of both Christian Spiritualists and the politically moderate, the ideological shift that allowed for the creation of a religious superstructure around American Spiritualism shows the degree to which the movement had evolved from its original incarnations. No longer was Spiritualism a loose umbrella encompassing a wide variety of reform movements and theological beliefs. The delegates of the Fourth

National Convention of Spiritualists effectively created a new movement with all the

22 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867. 23 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 2, 1867. 1. 79 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 trappings of sectarianism, hierarchy and dogma that Antebellum Spiritualism aimed to eliminate.

Further illustration of this process is the discussion at the convention regarding the creation of Moral Police Societies. On Wednesday morning, the

Committee on Resolutions brought forth a proposal for the creation of an organization that would have branches in every city, town, and neighborhood in the

United States. This organization would have three objectives. First, it would it would find aid for America’s poor and needy, regardless of their “belief, creed, or opinion.”24 This was a monumental task in itself. The end of the Civil War led to a massive increase in homelessness and poverty throughout the United States.

Wounded and jobless veterans, widowed women, and orphaned children lined

America’s streets in unprecedented numbers.25 Spiritualists believed that an organized group with a paramilitary structure could provide the type of boots-on- the-ground assistance these people needed to get back on their feet. Secondly, the

Moral Police Societies would provide medical care to the sick. This, too, was a much- needed service. The cost of medical services skyrocketed during the Civil War.

Those who could afford professional medical care were often at the mercy of untrained practitioners – a result of a profession that was still struggling to professionalize.26 The Moral Police Society’s third charge was to “search out and

24 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 19, 1867, 1. 25 Kenneth L. Kusmer, Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002): 35-38. 26 Paul Starr, The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (New York: Basic Books, 1982): 77-79, 93-99. 80 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 reclaim fallen and misdirected men and women, and work together in every practicable way to promote health, temperance, virtue, fraternal love and the practical reformation of society.”27 Unfortunately, the resolution was passed without debate, so we are left to imagine what such an organization might look like.

Although these Moral Police Societies never came to fruition, they offer further insight into the imaginations of the Spiritualist orthodoxy. Emergent Spiritualism did not suffer from a lack of confidence. These delegates believed that an organizational superstructure was the key to translating the new Spiritual dispensation into a practical pathway for humanity’s advancement toward a higher enlightenment.

These proposals seem outlandish. How could such a small movement support not one but two international organizations? What we can surmise from this proposal, the proposal for the United Order for Spiritual Progress, and the reaction to the Christian Amendment is that the delegates of the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists wildly overestimated the number of Spiritualists living in the United

States in the immediate post-war period. After four days of listening to delegates boast about the number of Spiritualists in the United States, the Committee on

Resolutions proposed that a another committee be formed to determine to actual number of Spiritualists in the United States. Two efforts to count America’s

Spiritualists before the convention produced two wildly different results. The

Westminster Review, a radical philosophical journal published out of England, estimated the number of Spiritualists in the United States to be between ten and

27 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 19, 1867, 1. 81 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013 three hundred thousand.28 The Roman Catholic Church conducted its own review and determined the number to be around eleven million, or roughly thirty percent of the total population.29

Judging by the delegates’ own rhetoric, it seems the Fourth National

Convention erred towards the Catholic estimate. In reality, the Catholics were overestimating the power of Spiritualists while the Spiritualists were returning the favor. For example, Michael Dyott lamented the fact that Spiritualism had not translated its massive numbers into practical gains, “numbering as we do more than any sect upon the civilized earth, we know not where to lay our heads, whilst the most insignificant sect upon God’s footstool enjoys the advantages of beautiful churches and buildings for their use, wherever they desire them.”30 Dyott was likely referring to the Roman Catholic Church, the most frequent target of contempt throughout the Convention. Catholicism was the largest single Christian denomination in the United States in the immediate post-war period. In the United

States alone, there were more than three million Roman Catholics living in the

United States when Dyott made that claim.31 Undoubtedly, Dyott believed that

Spiritualists far outnumbered the three million Catholics living in the United States.

28 Michael J. Turner, “Radical Opinion in an Age of Reform: Thomas Perronet Thompson and the Westminster Review,” History 85 (281) 2002: 21. 29 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867. 1. 30 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, November 23, 1867, 1. 31 Robert Emmett Curran, Shaping American Catholicism: Maryland and New York, 1805-1915 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012): 248. 82 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Mary F. Davis estimated in one of her addresses that there were between six and eleven million Spiritualists living in the United States.32

Historian Ann Braude pointed out the trouble with trying to count

Spiritualists. Both “enthusiastic supporters and alarmed detractors proposed inflated figures, all equally without basis.”33 Though I agree with Mary

Bednarowski’s estimate that Spiritualism probably topped out at around one million adherents, the far more useful question in need of answering is: what makes an adherent?34 As I have shown in the first two chapters, much of the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists was defined by what I call a process of alienation – the systematic, deliberate attempt to create a new religious movement by cleansing an existing movement of heterodox belief systems. This process redefined who was – and who was not – a Spiritualist. The Spiritualists charged with determining the number of Spiritualists faced this same problem. If a “Spiritualist” was someone who believed that people could communicate with spirits, the number may have been in the millions. If a “Spiritualist” was defined the way the convention defined it, the number must have been very small. A “Spiritualist” at the Fourth National

Convention was someone who believed that communication with spirits provided an inexhaustible pathway to spiritual enlightenment on earth. He or she believed that all other creeds were bastions of ancient philosophy that had now been obviated by the new Spiritualist dispensation. He or she believed that the sanctity of

32 “Official Report,” Banner of Light, October 12, 1867, 1. 33 Braude, Radical Spirits, 25. 34 Mary Farrell Bednarowski, “Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 59 (1975), 5. 83 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Spiritualist practice was worth going to war with the United States, and he or she believed that Spiritualism was meant to enact a new world order that enforced

Spiritualist morality and reform principles in every city on the planet. If the committee charged with the task of counting America’s Spiritualists used the criteria of the convention, they would find few Spiritualists indeed. Emergent

Spiritualism was actively trying to alienate itself from American society. At the same time, however, it harbored ambitions of bringing American society, and eventually the world, under its domain.

Emergent Spiritualism was an imagined religion. In the minds of its architects, the new Spiritualism forged at the Fourth National Convention and unencumbered by its theologically and politically heterodox element, was to make the world anew. Spiritualism was no umbrella for reform. It was no cultural leisure activity. Emergent Spiritualism, to the group of influential Spiritualist leaders that formed the Spiritualist orthodoxy represented at the Fourth National Convention of

Spiritualists, was an all-encompassing philosophy that was humanity’s ultimate hope for spiritual enlightenment.

84 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

In her widely influential book Radical Spirits, noted historian Ann Braude called the Fourth National Convention of Spiritualists “uneventful.”1 Admittedly, very little substantial change came from the debates at the convention. The United

Order for Spiritual Progress was unsuccessful in its bid to influence global politics.

The Christian Amendment was never adopted, so the Spiritualists never went to war. Beyond the hypotheticals and hyperbole, however, the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists provides scholars of religion with the rare and valuable opportunity to study a religious movement in the midst of a transition that redefined its relationship with American culture.

The systematic process of alienation manifested at the Fourth National

Convention of Spiritualists in 1867 facilitated Spiritualism’s evolution from an inclusive philosophical movement to a religious tradition that broader American culture perceived to be occult. The methodological framework upon which this research is built provides useful analytical tools for examining the evolving nature between new religious movements and the culture from which they emerge. I suggest that this examination a religious tradition embroiled in the type of transition Bromley and Melton’s framework suggests not only validates the framework but offers a new avenue for study.

1 Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2001) 169. 85 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

The relationship between a religious movement and broader culture can change for many reasons. I would argue that in the case of Spiritualism after the

Civil War, this change was brought about by deliberate choices made by the leaders of the movement. The Spiritualist orthodoxy wanted a more contentious alignment with American culture because they saw that culture as inferior to the new order that Spiritualism was bringing about. The Fourth National Convention illustrates that the new religious movement – not broader culture – has agency in the process of creating discord between the movement and the culture from which it emerged.

Broader culture does have a role to play in this process as well. Once the new religious movement has alienated the moral establishment that defines American culture, that culture reserves the right to reciprocate. I propose that this process – a religious tradition alienating the culture that gave birth to it and the culture reciprocating that alienation – is how a new religious movement becomes an occult religious tradition.

More specifically, this research has offered a new interpretation of American

Spiritualism. By dividing Spiritualism into two movements, separated by the United

States Civil War, historians of Spiritualism can now make more sense of the sudden rise and fall of Spiritualism in nineteenth-century America. I have shown that the focused, hierarchical nature of postwar Spiritualism had relatively little in common with the inclusive, amorphous, and vaguely Christian movement launched incidentally by the Fox Sisters in 1848.

The Fourth National Convention of Spiritualism was hardly uneventful. The convention was the site of tremendous change for one of nineteenth-century 86 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

America’s most fascinating religious movements. It was the dividing line between a cultural fascination and an emergent religious tradition. Perhaps most importantly, the transcripts left behind by the delegates of the convention offer historians of religion with the rare opportunity to examine a religious tradition as it struggles to find its role in a contentious time in American history.

87 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albanese, Catherine L. A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso Books, 2006.

Applegate, Debby. The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. New York: Doubleday, 2006.

Bann, Jennifer. “Ghostly Hands and Ghostly Agency: The Changing Figure of the Nineteenth-Century Specter.” Victorian Studies 51 (4) (2009): 663-686.

Bednarowski, Mary Farrell. “Spiritualism in Wisconsin in the Nineteenth Century.” Wisconsin Magazine of History 59 (1975): 2-19.

Bode, Carl. The American Lyceum: Town Meeting of the Mind. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956.

Boucher, John Newton. A Century and a Half of Pittsburg and Her People, Volume II. New York: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1908.

Braude, Ann. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Bromley, David G., and J. Gordon Melton. “Reconceptualizing Types of Religious Organization: Dominant, Sectarian, Alternative, and Emergent Tradition Groups.” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 15 (3) (2012): 4-28.

Brown, Bill. The Material Unconscious: American Amusement, Stephen Crane, and the Economics of Play. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Campbell, J.B. Pittsburgh and Allegheny Spirit Rappings, Together With a General History of Spiritual Communications Throughout the United States. Allegheny, Pa.: Purviance & Co., 1851.

88 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Capron, Eliab W., and Henry D. Barron, Singular Revelations. Explanation and History of the Mysterious Communion with Spirits, Comprehending the Rise and Progress of The Mysterious Noises in Western New York, Generally Received as Spiritual Communications, second edition. Auburn, N.Y.: Fowlers & Wells, 1850.

Carroll, Bret E. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Chase, Warren. The Life-Line of the Lone One; or, Autobiography of the World’s Child. Boston: Bela Marsh, 1858.

Cohen, Anthony P. The Symbolic Construction of Community. London: Routledge Publishing, 1989.

Cox, Robert. Body and Soul: A Sympathetic History of American Spiritualism. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2003.

Curran, Robert Emmett. Shaping American Catholicism: Maryland and New York, 1805-1915. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.

Davis, Andrew Jackson. Magic Staff: an Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis. New York: J.S. Brown & Co., 1857.

______. The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind. New York: S.S. Lyon and Wm. Fishbough, 1847.

______. The Approaching Crisis: Being a Review of Dr. Bushnell’s Course of Lectures, On The Bible, Nature, Religion, Skepticism, and the Supernatural. Boston: William White & Company, 1870.

______. A Sacred Book, Containing Old and New Gospels: Derived and Translated From the Inspiration of Original Saints. Boston: William White & Company, 1873.

Delp, Robert W. “Andrew Jackson Davis: Prophet of American Spiritualism.” Journal of American History 54 (1) (June 1967): 48-50.

______. “A Spiritualist in Connecticut: Andrew Jackson Davis, the Hartford Years, 1850-1854.” The New England Quarterly 53, (3) (Sep. 1980): 345-362.

Denig, Stephen J. “Public Support for Religious Education in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” Journal of Research on Christian Education 13 (2004): 81-98.

Delanty, Gerard. Community. London: Routledge, 2003.

89 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

Eco, Umberto. The Search for the Perfect Language. Translated by James Fentress. New York: Blackwell Publishing, 1995.

Elliot, Charles Wyllys. Mysteries; or, Glimpses of the Supernatural containing Accounts of the Salem Witchcraft – the Cock-Lane Ghost – The Rochester Rappings – The Stratford Mysteries – Oracles – Astrology – Dreams – Demons – Ghosts – Spectres, &c. &c. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852.

Foster, Gaines M. Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865-1920. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

Gutierrez, Cathy. Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Hardinge, Emma. Modern American Spiritualism: A Twenty Years’ Record of the Communion between Earth and the World of Spirits, 2e. New York: Emma Hardinge, 1870.

Hull, Daniel. Biography of Moses Hull. Wellesley, Mass.: Maugus Printing Company, 1907.

Hull, Moses. The Contrast: Evangelicalism and Spiritualism Compared. Boston: William White and Company, 1873.

Kitch, Sally L. Chaste Liberation: Celibacy and Female Cultural Status. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Kusmer, Kenneth L. Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Levy, Leonard W. “Sims’ Case: The Fugitive Slave Law in Boston.” The Journal of Negro History 35 (1) (1950): 39-74.

Marcus, Ralph. “Pharisees, Essenes, and Gnostics.” Journal of Biblical Literature 73 (3) (1954): 157-161.

McAllister, David. Proceedings of the National Convention to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, February 4, 5, 1874. With an Account of the Origin and Progress of the Movement. Philadelphia: Christian Statesman Association, 1874.

McKanan, Dan. Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

90 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

McGarry, Molly. Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Moore, R. Laurence. Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Noll, Mark A. The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

Pankey, William Russell. History of the Churches of the Pittsburgh Baptist Association. Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1939.

Perry, Lewis. Childhood, Marriage, and Reform: Henry Clarke Wright, 1797-1870. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.

Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. Austin Phelps: A Memoir. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1891.

Schmidt, Leigh Eric. Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.

______. Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005.

______. “From Demon Possession to Magic Show: Ventriloquism, Religion, and the Enlightenment.” Church History 67, (2) (1998): 274-305.

Sehat, David. The Myth of American Religious Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Spence, Lewis. “Phelps, The Rev. Dr. Eliakim.” In Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, part 2.

Sprague, William B. Annals of the American Pulpit or Commemorative Notices of Distinguished American Clergymen of Various Denomination, volume VI. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.

Starr, Paul. The Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry. New York: Basic Books, 1982.

Stein, Stephen J. The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.

91 Texas Tech University, Richard Kent Evans, August 2013

______. Communities of Dissent: A History of Alternative Religions in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Printer Publisher Ltd., 1991.

Toohey, J.H.W. A Review of Rev. I.E. Dwinell’s Sermon Against Spiritualism. Boston: Bela Marsh, 1857.

Turner, Michael J. “Radical Opinion in an Age of Reform: Thomas Perronet Thompson and the Westminster Review.” History 86 (281) (2001): 18-40.

Weisberg, Barbara. Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism. New York: HarperCollins, 2004.

92