Thursday, January 11, 2024

It is the 11th of January 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

There is something of a cottage industry in taking church scandals, pastoral personal failings, and the like and making a name and money from the events. You’ll forgive me if I’m not that interested in the next scandalous documentary or multi-part podcast on what a naughty so-and-so was. This is not to excuse sin, especially in positions of authority, nor is it to say we shouldn’t shed light on harmful practices. Some of the work is praiseworthy, while much of it seems more akin to tabloid doggerel. There is a kind of 21st-century glee in wallowing about failed ministers and ministries. I make this note because there was a time when this kind of news and scandal was unheard of- as if ministers were somehow exempt from the sin of stain and scandal.

And so it was, on this day in 1875, that the Scandal of the Century erupted in the nation's papers with allegations against Henry Ward Beecher, the popular minister at the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. The Beecher family may have been the most famous American family in the 19th century. The patriarch, Lyman Beecher, was a popular preacher during the Second Great Awakening and an abolitionist. Among his 13 children were the aforementioned Henry, his daughter Harriet- the Harriet Beecher Stowe behind Uncle Tom’s Cabin (the most popular book in 19th c. America) as well as Catherine, Edward, Charles, Isabella, and Thomas- all public figures in education, abolition, and the church.

Henry’s church was amongst the most popular in the nation; a skilled orator, his sermons were reprinted in newspapers, and thousands flocked to his congregational church. And so, it would be the scandal of the century when the case of Beecher Vs. Tilton began on this day in the Brooklyn City Court.

The scandal began in 1870 with rumors and reports of an affair between the Reverend Beecher and his friend, the publisher Theodore Tilton’s wife, Elizabeth. While there had been whispers of something untoward, it was Victoria Woodhull who published a lurid account of what she believed had happened. Woodhull, a friend to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Lady Stanton (giants of women’s suffrage), was an instant celebrity. And with this came scrutiny into her past life. She had proclaimed herself a “magnetic healer” and was the daughter of fortune tellers in the Midwest. Victoria initially came to prominence as a medium that helped Commodore Vanderbilt make stock predictions. She was married to at least two men simultaneously.

Her printing of the tale of indiscretion led to her being jailed for six months, guilty of distributing obscene literature through the mail.

Beecher had initially hoped the affair would go away; he did not want the Tiltons to be stained by the story and thus ignored it. That is until zealous members of his church had the Tiltons expelled from the congregation, sides were drawn, and a war was on in the papers.

Eventually, the Advisory Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States stepped in to hold a hearing and ruled in Beecher’s favor. Not only was Mrs. Woodhull’s character and motives questioned, but a “confession” of the affair from Mrs. Tilton was recanted. She claimed it was her husband's jealousy that caused them to conceive of the plan to take down Beecher initially.

This may have been the end of the affair, but claims and counterclaims in the press led to criminal claims of libel. And so, it was on this day in 1875 that the trial began in a Brooklyn Court. There was a black market for tickets into the courtroom, and the press covered the story incessantly for months. The 12 jurors, now in the first heatwave of the year, deliberated for eight hot days and took 52 ballots. The final vote was 9-3 in favor of Beecher. Tilton, disgraced, left for Paris, and Beecher, though stained, continued as a preacher and speaker until his death.

In his “When Law Goes Pop: The Vanishing Line between Law and Popular Culture,” professor Richard Sherwin remarked on this particular case as a watershed for a public fascination with private sin and their legislation. The trial over the “Scandal of the Century,” a harbinger of things to come, began on this day in 1875.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary, another timely word from 1 Corinthians 10:

I beg you that when I come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 11th of January 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who also employs a magnetic healer and medium for stock tips- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man trying to remember the deal with those magnetic healing bracelets that golf dads wore in the '90s… I’m 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.