by Jerome
Photograph from the
Fitchburg Sentinel, Mass, for April 22, 1891
What links the Scopes monkey trial of 1925, this blog’s resident
bad boy, Albert Royal Delmont Jones of the ill-fated Day Star, and Charles
Taze Russell of Zion’s Watch Tower? The answer is Richard Heber Newton.
Your first reaction may be – who?
To give a flavor of the man, check out
first this newspaper item from the Aurora Daily Express for November 22, 1892. (The same
story was also published in The Times, Trenton, N.J. November 19, 1892, and the
Lincoln Evening News, Nebraska, November 25, 1892, and no doubt other papers of
the day).
The
clipping shows that Newton was widely known in his day. His “misfortunes”
included being charged with heresy. In truth, he was to be charged with heresy
on three separate occasions during his career, in 1883, 1884 and 1891, but as a sign of liberalizing theology the matter was always
fudged so that he kept his position. The newspaper above, which relates to the
1891 episode, noted
that Newton was “exonerated”, although dryly commented that “not proven” might
be more accurate.
More than a decade after Newton’s death
America was to be fascinated by what was popularly called the Scopes Monkey
Trial in 1925. A substitute high school teacher, John Scopes, was accused of
violating the Butler Act which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any
state-funded school in Tennessee. Although the fundamentalists won the skirmish
of the day and Scopes was found guilty, his conviction was overturned on a
technicality. Long-term the fundamentalists lost ground as far as future
legislation was concerned, although the Butler Act actually stayed on the books
until 1967.
But in covering the case, most journalists highlighted past cases
where an attack on a literal interpretation of the Bible had put people in the
dock, including clergymen like Dr Richard Heber Newton. Several newspapers
mentioned Newton being charged back in the 1890s with “broad churchmanship” -
in other words heresy. The cutting below comes from the Daily Northwestern
(Oshkosh, Wisconsin) for July 10, 1925:
The same story appeared in other papers such as the Wisconsin
Rapids Daily Tribune, July 9, 1925, and the Lima News, Ohio, July 10, 1925.
According to the small print, Newton had demanded a formal trial, but when this
demand was met, the plaintiffs failed to appear. And Newton was viewed as a
champion of liberal theology as opposed to literalists and fundamentalists.
So who was this man, and what was his connection with “truth
history”?
Richard
Heber Newton (1840-1914) was a prominent American Episcopalian clergyman and
writer. From 1869 to 1902 he was rector of All Souls' Protestant Episcopal
Church in New York City. He was a leader in the Social Gospel movement and as
evidenced above, a firm supporter of Higher Criticism of the Bible. He came to
prominence and notoriety in the early 1880s with a series of sermons later
published in book form (copyright 1883) entitled “The Right and Wrong Uses of
the Bible”. This work clearly nails his colors to the wall.
While
commending the Bible as literature that could work on the emotions, Newton’s
stance on inerrancy and inspiration was clear. His premise, bluntly and
vigorously expressed, was that (in his own words):
It is
wrong to accept its utterances indiscriminately as the words of God.
It is
wrong to accept everything recorded therein as necessarily true.
It
is wrong to consult it...for the determining of our judgements and the decision
of our actions.
It
is wrong to go to it for divination of the future.
And
it is wrong to manufacture out of it any one uniform system of theology.
Preaching
this material from the pulpit and publishing it for the masses outside of his
own church drew strong criticism in certain quarters – hence the repeated
charges of heresy and attendant newspaper notoriety.
These
five key points of Newton’ theology would all be at obvious odds with the
message found in CTR’s Zion’s Watch Tower of the day. But in the 1880s they
would be manna from heaven for Albert Royal Delmont Jones.
In the 1880s, after already
having fended off two charges of heresy, Newton would write extensively (and
sometimes exclusively) for Jones’ Day Star Paper.
The
August 19, 1886 issue lists around 60 of Newton’s
sermons being available in the Day Star pages. And some were exclusive to
editor Jones at this point. For example:
A similar advertisement for the same pamphlet showed
that it was given away as a free gift to all new Day Star subscribers:
This clearly shows that in 1886 the most prominent
theological voice in Albert Royal Delmont Jones’ Day Star was that of Richard
Heber Newton.
Whether
Charles Taze Russell ever knew of Newton’s connection with Jones is not known,
but Newton was sufficiently famous (or infamous) to make him a specific target
in Zion’s Watch Tower. ZWT for July 1, 1892, carried a
lengthy article (including a cartoon) that took up 10 of the magazine’s 16
pages. (See reprints pages 1417-1420).
CTR started by laying into Protestant clergy in general
who preached higher criticism, describing them as “men honoured with titles
such as neither our Lord not any of his apostles ever owned...who receive
salaries such as no apostle ever received...(and) who are recognized as among
the best educated in all things pertaining to worldly wisdom...but which
prefers to arraign that revelation before an inferior court of fallible human
philosophers and incompetent judges who vainly overrate their own knowledge and
wisdom.”
He continued, “What wonder that the pews are also
sceptical... They are handing stones and serpents to those who look to them for
food... As for the average nominal Christian...he is just ready to swallow
these suggestions of unbelief.” The Towers had warned about these developments
from the very early issues.
Having lambasted the clergy in general, CTR next turned
his attention to the Rev. R. Heber Newton in the particular, mentioning him by
name three times. After one lengthy quote from Newton, CTR derided his
theology: (capitalization mine):
“Here is a REPUDIATION of all that Christ taught on the
subject of the “things written” which “must be fulfilled,” a REPUDIATION of all
his quotations from the Law and the Prophets; a REPUDIATION of his repeated
statements of God’s choice of...the seed of Abraham as heirs of the promises
that of these should come the predicted Messiah; (and) a REPUDIATION of his
statement of the necessity of his death.”
The last point hit at the heart of CTR’s theology. His
attack on Newton’s preaching continued: “But whilst showing Christ to have been
a wonderful Jew, and the great exemplar for both Jews and Gentiles, he (Newton)
utterly REPUDIATES him as a Savior in the sense that the Master taught – that
he “gave his life a ransom for many” – “to save (recover) that which was lost.”
CTR applied Matthew 7:22 to Newton – “those who say
Lord, Lord, yet follow not his teachings...It is the duty of every true
disciple to rebuke them; for the outward opponents do far less harm than those
who wear the Master’s name whilst denying his doctrine.”
CTR concluded his lengthy attack on Newton with the
words:
“As a further element of this discussion the reader is
referred to Chapters ii, iii, and x. of MILLENNIAL DAWN, Vol. 1. And thus we
rest our argument for the present; urging all who have “laid hold upon the hope
set before us in the gospel” to hold fast the confidence of their rejoicings
firm unto the end – to hold fast to the Book, And how much more easy it is and
will be for those who have learned the real plan of God and seen its beauty to
stand firm upon the Bible than for others. To many, alas! It is a jumbled mass
of doctrinal contradictions, but to us it is the foundation of a clear,
definite, grand plan of the ages. So grandly clear and symmetrical is the
wonderful plan that all who see it are convinced that only God could have been
its author, and that the book whose teachings it harmonizes must indeed be
God’s revelation.”
Albert D Jones’ reliance on Newton to fill his Day Star
pages in the 1880s, and CTR’s lengthy and specific attack on Newton’s theology
in the early 1890s, shows the gulf that now existed between CTR and his former
co-worker. There were a number of people over the years who parted
company with CTR and founded their own journals – Paton, Adams, von Zech,
Henninges – but at least they retained a more or less fundamentalist approach to
scripture, and could have a framework within which to debate their own proof
texts. The same was true with other religious journals, One Faith, Adventist,
and the like.
But the infidel Jones had gone one step further. In ZWT for May 1890 CTR
reviewed the history of the developing “truth movement” in a lengthy article
entitled Harvest Gatherings and Siftings. Concerning Jones’ paper (Zion’s) Day
Star, he wrote that “within one year it had repudiated Christ’s atoning
sacrifice, and within another year it had gone boldly into infidelity and
totally repudiated all the rest of the Bible as well as those portions which
teach the fall in Adam and the ransom therefrom in Christ.” He also noted that
of that date (1890) the Day Star was “now for some years discontinued”. The
whole article was reprinted with some amendments in the special 1894 issue of
ZWT entitled A Conspiracy Exposed and Harvest Siftings.
The dates (“one year” then “another year”) line up perfectly with the
first publication of Newton’s credo “The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible”. To then
allow Newton his weekly pulpit in the Day Star pages would make perfect sense
to Albert D, but illustrates how just far (by CTR’s terms of reference) he had
gone beyond the pale.
