Friday, July 26, 2024

It is the 26th of July 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Thanks to some of you I ran into in the wild this week and heard from otherwise about the “great people and ideas” Summer we are having here on the Almanac- I am going back to some of the biggest names and ideas and how they changed the church and the world- so you will hear some names AGAIN- but if you start to hear certain names over and over, you might ask why.

And this name- really 3 names- warranted their own Weekend Edition back in 2022 when the weekend show began- I couldn’t wait to tell the story of the an I called then the “Uncommon Commoner”, today I’ll recall another of his nicknames: the Prophet Statesman- he was William Jennings Bryan- born in 1860 in Salem, Illinois.

He grew up with a Methodist mother and Baptist father- he ended up with the Cumberland Presbyterians- those who downplayed “Calvinism” and debates about election for social causes. He would study law and practice in Jacksonville and then in Lincoln, Nebraska. He and his wife Mary would have three children.

While practicing law, he became a popular speaker on the Chautauqua circuit that featured popular reformers speaking on issues of religion and society. His general populism and echo of an old-time revival preacher with a booming voice made him a popular commentator on the state of the church and state as a young man. He would run for Congress, failing to win but gaining recognition such that he was nominated for President by the Democrats at the 1896 convention after his famous “cross of Gold speech” that denounced eastern money and bankers in favor of the modern self-made man.

He would lose- but was the youngest person ever with an electoral vote in a presidential election. He ran again in 1900- now “running for election”- one of the first to do it- McKinley beat Bryan in part by taking an exuberant Bryan clone as a running mate- that man would become president Teddy Roosevelt with the assassination of McKinley.

He would lose in 1908 for a third time, but when Woodrow Wilson became the democratic nominee and then president, he made Bryan Secretary of State.

It was Bryan’s Christian conviction that caused him to resign his post when he couldn’t support what was becoming World War I. He had previously been the kind of a conscience for the nation with his persistent calls for programs to benefit the poor.

In his final years, Bryan took up the cause of opposing social Darwinism. He believed that living by the “law of the jungle” where competition kills as opposed to what he called “the moral code of the meek and lowly Nazarene.”

He saw this teaching in Darwin- namely in “social Darwinism”- and he believed that its teaching hurt the poor. He helped to craft a bill in Tennessee- called the Butler Act, which would forbid the teaching of biological evolution in public schools as fact. A small town looking for publicity and tourism had a patsy called Scopes take the fall for teaching evolution (the main bio teacher was the principal, so they couldn’t charge him).

When the case went to court, Bryan was the state's legal counsel in the prosecution of Scopes. Scopes, for his stunt, got Clarence Darrow- one of the most famous trial lawyers of his day.

It was a showdown between the “everyday” “bible believing Christian” and the

“Liberal academic” [good this history never repeats…]

It was a dud of a trial until Darrow asked to cross-examine Bryan and ran circles around an aging and unwell man in the summer heat. Commentators gave the victory to Bryan’s critics while the judge ruled in favor of the state. A processing error led to the case being overturned and dropped. Bryan went home and, on the 26th of July in 1925, died at the age of 65.

He was socially progressive, an icon for conservative Christianity, a populist legend, and a fundamentalist boogeyman. He was called both the great commoner and the statesman prophet—he was William Jennings Bryan.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary, from Colossians 3:

12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, 13 forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of July 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who wears his “cross of gold” with a silk shirt, half unbuttoned, cruising in his IROC-Z, Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man whose junior high band teacher drove a slick Iroc-Z- with polyester pants and a van dyke mustache- 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.