Tuesday, October 11, 2022

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show ***

It is the 11th of October, 2022. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Ooh boy, have we got a character for you today- a clergyman from Revolutionary America- and creator of a few of America’s favorite founding myths.

His name was Mason Locke Weems, known as Parson Weems from his career as a country Parson, or pastor, in All Hallow’s Parish in Maryland. He was one of the youngest of 19 children, born on the 11th of October in 1759, into a Maryland family that emigrated to the colonies from Scotland.

We know very little of his youth, and many of the details of his life are obscure- perhaps purposely so. He trained for the Anglican clergy, but with the outbreak of the American Revolution, he and others ran into a sticky problem. The first was being associated with a denomination whose name bore the name of the country against which the colonies were fighting. This would be fixed in America with the ditching of the name “Anglican” and instead renaming the church after the style of church polity- that is, with Bishops- or “episcopos.” They would become the “Episcopalians” (some who have split from the episcopal church have begun to reclaim the old Anglican name).

But the problem was with the outbreak of the war; there were no bishops in the colonies. And to be ordained, you needed a bishop to ordain you for the sake of apostolic succession. Weems and others would go to England for ordination but ran into the problem of having to, in their ordination, swear allegiance to the King as the head of the church. This oath of fealty was a bridge too far for colonists like Weems and, thus, a pickle. He asked Benjamin Franklin what to do, and he characteristically said to ignore the superstition of apostolic succession and go without ordination. This, too, would be unacceptable to Weems. He asked John Adams what to do, and he suggested he be ordained by Danish bishops who had been ordained by English bishops. (You might remember Samuel Seabury of Hamilton fame would go to Scotland for his ordination as a Bishop- thus, the episcopal church today has the Scottish Flag on it). Luckily for Weems, Parliament passed the Enabling Act allowing ordinations to omit the oath of allegiance to the crown.

Back home in Maryland, he became a rector at All Hallow’s Parish in Anne Arundel county in 1789. From a neighboring pastor's recollections, he was a capable parson who was a famous, if not dramatic, preacher. Yet the poor salary led him to become a book peddler and an “unofficial itinerant and occasional missionary,” in the words of his fellow pastor.

He worked for the publisher Matthew Carey while occasionally filling pulpits- including one in Mt. Vernon that was the parish of George Washington. And this connection to Washington that Weem would famously build his later career. Weems began writing himself and has also sold books; he knew what sold- the year after Washington died in 1799, Weem’s produced his “The Life of George Washington.” It was a book for young boys and those deemed “less cultured.” It is a biography, but from its publication to the present, it has been treated more as an oddity than a work of history- with invented dialog, dramatic flourish, and unverifiable and untrue stories. The two most famous stories might be familiar to you. The first was of a young George who carelessly killed a cherry tree and, when confronted, responded, “Pa, you know I can’t tell a lie,” to which his father embraced him and praised his honesty (this was a favorite story of Abraham Lincoln who read Weems book as a child). The second was a story that Weems claimed was told to him by a quaker friend of his- it was at the consequential battle of Valley Forge that the quaker came across Washington alone and knelt in prayer with his sword fastened to his side. This, Weems tells us, convinced the Quakers that pacifism was not the only Christian response to war. A handy story to use, indeed!

Unfortunately, Weems would use the worst excesses of the Christian tradition of hagiography- the embellishing of stories of saints for moral instruction and the supposed strengthening of the Christian claims- of course, Washington was anti-Supernatural and closer to the Deism of Jefferson than Christianity. Weems would go on to write other such “biographies” of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin. The curious Parson turned book peddler and then peddler of myth and hagiography, Mason Locke Weems, would die in 1825; born on this day in 1759, he was 65 years old.

The Last Word for today comes from the lectionary for today from Ephesians 6:

18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people. 19 Pray also for me, that whenever I speak, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 11th of October 2022, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose favorite Washington myth was his ability to tear full phone books in half. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who just reminded himself of the Power Team- evangelists that would actually tear phone books in two. Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.