Introductory
Essay
It was once the fashion to introduce
books similar to this one with an apology for adding another work to an already
well-covered topic. We offer no such apology. The Watch Tower movement is one
of the most controversial and most written about religious movements of the
last two centuries. It is also one of the least understood and most
miss-represented movements. There is no accurately presented history of the
Watch Tower movement’s foundation years. This book exists because neither the
friends nor the enemies of Charles Taze Russell have produced anything
approaching a reasonably well researched and accurate account of the Watch
Tower’s early years.
Despite a persistent mythology to the contrary, the emergence
of the Watch Tower movement as a cohesive and separate religious identity owes
far less to Russell personally than it does to the adoption of mutually
agreeable doctrines. This process filled the years from 1871 to 1886. No one
doctrinal choice marked Russell and a growing body of associates as unique. The
collective did, resulting over time in a separate religious identity.
Friends of the Watch Tower and of Charles Taze Russell, the
founder of Zion’s Watch Tower, have seldom passed beyond an uncritical
reading of a biographical article published first in 1890, but a wealth of
detail is available. A Russell-centric view overlooks the interplay of
personalities and the debates that molded the loosely connected group a
distinct religion. Russell’s friends have separated the spiritual from the
mundane. Compartmentalizing history leaves no room for an accurate narrative.
Worse, one recent writer whose book presents a largely favorable picture of
Russell manufactured out of his or another’s imagination an entire narrative,
almost none of which is correct.
Russell’s admirers put him in a historically untenable
position. Even when presenting reasonably accurate narrative, they tend to
create or perpetuate a myth. For many of them, Russell was God’s special
instrument to restore vital truths. This apotheosis disconnects Russell from
the realm of critical history. It presents a false picture of Russell, his
associates and opponents. Even if one believes Russell was favored by God, no
person of faith should pursue myth-building at the expense of carefully
researched, accurate history. If God’s hand directed the Watch Tower movement
in Russell’s day, would that not best be shown by a reasonably well-researched
presentation of events that reconnects Russell to his environment? If Russell
had a place in God’s work, mythologizing him hides it.
Opposition writers also manufacture, distort and misrepresent
events. This is especially true of former adherents. Several examples come to
mind. Some suggest Russell plagiarized Paton’s Day Dawn. One frequent
though seldom accurate writer suggests that Russell stole the Herald of the
Morning subscription list. One former adherent has turned himself into an
Internet “troll,” posting in the comments section of any news article about
Jehovah’s Witnesses that Russell was an Adventist. The claim of Russellite
Adventism is common. Aside from the fact that this claim is wrong, we are at a
loss to explain how having been an Adventist would tarnish Russell’s character.
Russell was baptized a Presbyterian; he was a Congregationalist; he became a
One Faith Millenarian with Age-to-Come views. He was never an Adventist. Only
the intellectually lazy would associate him with Adventism.
Almost none of the published material meets an academic
standard. Of those few books that do, none of them consider the founding period
in any detail. All of them derive what little they say from a single article
from the 1890 Zion’s Watch Tower with some additions from Alexander Hugh
Macmillan’s Faith on the March. There is a consequent failure to grasp
key events in the growth an independent religious movement. And there is a
significant misdirection, because of the very narrow and contracted view of
Watch Tower history found in the Russell’s 1890 article.
Without looking further, writers
have uniformly suggested an Adventist origin for Watch Tower theology. There
were undeniable contacts with Adventism, and many of the early adherents came
from the fractured Adventist movement. Researchers tend to focus on what became
the Advent Christian Church, ignoring interchanges with other Adventist bodies,
including the Life and Advent Union, independent Adventist congregations and
Sabbatarian Adventists. The focus has been on the development of Watch Tower
doctrine from Millerite Adventism. This is a mistake.
As commonly told, Russell was
introduced to Millerite Adventism by Jonas Wendell and other Adventists. Some
suggest a Seventh-day Adventist connection, which is laughably ignorant.
Russell is supposed to have adopted much of Millerite theology. Though he
denied ever having been an Adventist he was one.
This is wrong. None of Russell’s doctrines owe their origin
to Millerism or any of the descendent Adventists organizations. Russell’s
belief system, with a few key exceptions, was developed while in association
with Age-to-Come believers, especially those in the One Faith Movement. This movement
was most closely associated with The Restitution, a newspaper published
in Plymouth, Indiana. Russell’s closest associates were connected to One Faith
or some form of Age-to-Come belief. This includes George Storrs.
Storrs was an independent Age-to-Come
believer, abandoning Millerite Adventism in 1844. You will find some of that
history documented in this book. Storrs and those loosely associated with The
Restitution avoided organizational structure. The movement spoke with
conflicting voices, but they held some key doctrines in common. They believed
in a restored paradise earth without the fiery destruction predicted by
Adventists. They believed that the prophecies, indeed all of scripture, should
be taken as literal. The Jews would be restored because the plain literal sense
of Scripture suggested they would be. They were divided on other issues. Storrs
taught a Fair Chance doctrine that some called Second Probationism. A
significant minority of One Faith believers followed this path. We will detail
other differences between the two movements.
There are several reasons why this
part of Russell’s history is miss-represented.. Many of Russell’s
contemporaries, particularly those outside the two movements, lacked a clear
understanding of what Adventism was and how it differed from Age-to-Come and
other pre-millennialist beliefs. One finds One Faith and Christadelphians
described as Age-to-Come Adventists – a name they rejected. Because Adventists,
Millenarians, and Christadelphians believed that Christ’s return was near,
outsiders lumped them under the one name.
While some of Russell’s
contemporaries and some academic writers today confuse Age-to-Come belief with
Adventism, the two parties did not. They saw themselves as distinct
doctrinally. The decade of the 1870s was a transitional period for the Advent
Christian Association. It was rapidly transitioning from a lose association
having belief in the near return of Christ and good Christian conduct as the
sole standard of association into a Church with more closely defined doctrine.
Some who associated with them were ostracized and found new associates among
Age-to-Come believers. George Stetson was one of these, though he died before a
decisive break between the two bodies occurred.
The division between Literalist and
Adventist belief affected Watch Tower adherents. Subsequent tensions between
Russell and Adventists derive from his Age-to-Come (also called Millennairan)
belief system which was derived from British Literalism. These differences
would serve as a sieve that would catch and remove from fellowship those who
accepted other systems. Paton and his followers, many of whom had been
Adventists, rejected Literalism, and this rejection of “plain sense” exegesis
accounts for many of their differences. Arthur Prince Adams plainly says that
his differences with Russell are based on his rejection of Literalist belief.
Adams sought the “hidden meaning” behind the Bible’s plain words. He explained
this in the introductory article to the first issue of his magazine:
By
Spirit of the Word I mean its real and intended meaning,
in contradistinction to its apparent and surface meaning, or the “letter.” It
is a common mistake among Christians to suppose that the Bible is written in
very plain and simple language, and that the correct meaning is that which lies
upon the surface – the most obvious and apparent sense. If I err not, the truth
is just the opposite of this. The Bible often means something very different
from what it says; there is a hidden, mystical sense that is like the pearl hid
in the depths of the sea, the real jewel.[1]
This stands in stark contrast to
Russell and his associates. They sought the Bible’s plain words. It is not our
purpose to suggest he succeeded in that quest. That determination is best made
by our readers. But we state the difference in theological perspective. It
explains much.
Another reason Russell is seen as a closet-Adventist derives
from un-reasoning opposition to his teaching. The name Adventist was seen as a
pejorative. Adventists were uniformly seen as on the fringe of American
religious life. Newspapers noted every passing and failed prediction, every
supposed and real extreme among Adventists. The described as “Adventist” those
who were not such. They manufactured events. Adventism became a hot-tar soaked
brush for editors to use when news was sparse. Painting Russell with the brush
of extremism is a fad among opposers. There
is, however, a real story behind the myth. One of our goals has been to tell
the real, historically verifiable, story.
We believe our research restores
detail. In doing so, we believe that a clear understanding of events emerges. We
examine the roots of Russell’s theology, tracing his doctrinal development to
various individuals and publications. This dispels the myth that Russell and
his early associations studied in a vacuum, independent of the commentary or
exposition of others. We explore the doctrinal disunity among early adherents.
How Russell and his associates addressed this explains the transition from mere
readership to an ecclesiastical unity.
There is a startling lack of
perspective in most “histories” of the Watch Tower movement or of the antecedent
and cognate groups. Advent Christians liked to claim there were thirty thousand
adherents world wide. We could discover no valid basis for that claim and
believe the number was much smaller. One Faith believers played a significant role
in Watch Tower history.[2]
They counted about four thousand adherents in 1880. Russell sent out six
thousand copies of Zion’s Watch Tower’s first issue. Numbers dropped precipitously
as real interest replaced hoped-for subscribers. Yet, by 1883 Russell could
report fourteen thousand subscribers. The belief system reached England before
Russell first published his magazine. There was an adherent in France in the
1870s. The message reached Germany in 1885, perhaps earlier. It reached Norway
about 1880 via personal letters. This represented a social shift not just among
millennialists but in American religion, and that makes this story important.
The actors in this religious and
social drama are archetypical. Of special interest to us is the self-view of
the principal and many of the minor players. You will find N. H. Barbour who
saw himself as God’s spokesman even if almost no one else did. He died with fewer
than a thousand adherents by his claim, and realistically probably had fewer
than two hundred truly-interested followers. You will meet Frank Burr who
believed he heard Christ’s voice. There is John Paton who saw himself as
divinely chosen, the recipient of divine revelation. There is Russell who
believed himself divinely led, as God’s “special agent for special times.” We
find Elizabeth [Lizzie] A. Allen who agonized over her life choices. We meet J.
C. Sunderlin who because of war wounds became an opium addict, seeking relief
in religion and a quack cure. Which of these you sympathize with will depend on
your approach to this story.
We leave issues of faith largely untouched.
We’ve taken a historian’s approach. We will tell you what Russell said of
himself and others. We will tell you what his associates said and did. We will
not tell you that all this was guided by Holy Spirit or God’s own hand. That’s
not a historian’s place. We will leave that analysis to your own their prayerful
(or skeptical) estimations of themselves and others. We have avoided the trend
among modern historiographers to analyze motives. We’ve borrowed our approach
from 19th Century historians who told their tales in detail, but
with little commentary. So we owe much to Francis Parkman, H. H. Bancroft, and Israel
Smith Clare, historians who within the limits of available documentations gave
their readers detailed, largely accurate, narratives.
However, we cannot entirely escape
addressing motives. When required to do so, we limit ourselves to presenting
them in the words or by the unambiguous acts of those involved. Russell is
overly kind to Albert Delmont Jones. Jones was a disreputable man, a thief, a
fornicator, a religious fraud. We tell that story here as much as possible from
public record and his own words. Other scandals will appear. (We humans are
prone to stupidity.) So you will read about William Henry Conley’s faith cure
house, its pastor, his relationship to the women and girls associated with
Conley’s faith-cure belief. There are others you won’t read about because we
cannot verify to our satisfaction that there was real scandal. Suspicion
attaches to one of Russell’s early associates and a young teenage girl. We tell
as much of that story as we can verify. We leave the unverified gossip to the
ebay posters, the Internet scandal mongers, and the conspiracy theorists and inept
wikipedia writers.
As perverse as it seems to say so,
the endless divisions that we chronicle here resulted in doctrinal unity. They
were key to the formation of an ecclesiastical unity centered on Zion’s
Watch Tower and its editor, Charles Taze Russell.
***
Watch Tower history as it has been
written resembles Greek mythology. As with Greek mythology the stories are
often told in conflicting ways. If you have ever read the myths of Pan’s
parentage, you understand what I mean. In the Russell mythology there is
Russell the saint and there is Russell the devilish, religious fraudster. We
have limited ourselves to Russell the man. We deal with unfounded claims in
each chapter. In the process, we probably offend everyone with a personal
commitment to the myths. We have enjoyed bursting bubbles. Watch the footnotes
carefully. We detail false claims in footnotes where we do not always do so in
text. We’ve been even handed in this. You will find us faulting claims made by
true believers and by opposition polemicists.
The first chapter considers Russell’s
youth. Several key ideas and some minor statements fall to research. Unlike a
Bible Student writer, we do not chronicle Russell as the modern-day Samuel,
destined to be God’s special servant in the last days. We do not question his
belief. This is not about belief. It’s about accurately told history. So, while
we recount what his mother said, we keep it in the context of real, verifiable
events. Others can put these events in the context of their belief systems, and
we may hold to belief systems of our own. But we only tell the story as we can
verify it, and we do that largely through Russell and his contemporary’s own
words supplemented with documentary evidence.
An endless amount of incorrect material is out there. That it
exists is a personal irritant. In many ways, writing this history has been a
salve to my irritation derived from the misguided, sometimes purposely
incorrect, and incurious approach of others. I do not care if you hate or adore
Russell. I do not care if you see any of the descendant religions as God’s
authoritative voice to humanity. We’ve written this book to present accurately
research history that meets academic standards. Our goal is to tell the history
in detail so that all the trends, events and outcomes make sense.
Mythology replaces history when lack
of curiosity is coupled by lack of thorough research. Among Russell’s
modern-day friends this is especially pronounced. A number of letters passed
between us and institutions representing descendant religions. In a nearly
uniform way, they focus on Russell, express lack of interest in anyone else,
and simply do not look for detail. This distorts the history. Russell did not
function in a vacuum. He was influenced by his friends, by his enemies, by what
he read and experienced. These details are recoverable. The biographies of his
early associates are available to a determined researcher. The “brothers”
Lawver, Hipsher, Tavender, Myers, and a host of others who receive more or less
mention in Zion’s Watch Tower were living people who had a physical and
spiritual presence in Russell’s life and an effect on his beliefs. There are
many others, some of considerable but forgotten prominence, who significantly
contributed to Watch Tower history and to the development of a unified body of
believers. But where are Aaron P. Riley or the small group in West Virginia who
withdrew from the Church of Christ to form a congregation? Not in any history
of the Watch Tower of which we are aware. Why is Calista Burk Downing a name
without biography in histories of Zion’s Watch Tower?
Probably there are several reasons
why the Watch Tower story hasn’t been told with nay sort of depth. Lack of
curiosity is a prime one. Past exchanges with interested parties elicited
comments such as, “Thank you for the photocopies. We’re only interested in
Russell himself.” This approach is part of the Saint Russell myth. Time and
circumstances have wounded this approach so that some who sustained it in the
past are no longer able to do so.
The other major problem has been lack of resources. The
resources we use to reclaim the biographies of Russell’s earliest associates
and to restate their place in Watch Tower history have always been out there. They
are somewhat easier to find now than they were twenty years ago. But individuals
and organizations with more resources than we have could have found them if
they had the curiosity to pursue the matter.
Attachment to a religious mythos in preference to accurately
told history has stifled curiosity. We have encountered a certain amount of
fear and resentment while writing this book. A university professor who is
writing a competing book strongly objected to our consideration of One Faith
belief because it undermines his premise. Another writer fears that we will
refute a story they wish to tell. A Bible Student expressed considerable
discontent that we do not present Russell as the God-directed Faithful and Wise
Servant. We’re writing history, not religious commentary. One person of
considerable talent as a writer, though he is published anonymously, suggested
that this history might show his religion as other than the Truth. Truth rests
with God. Truth is never embodied in his human servants simply because they are
human.
Another issue we address, though on
a limited scale, is the disconnect between the lives of Russell and his
associates and the world they lived in. The only redeeming feature of a
recently published biography of Russell is the author’s attempt to reconnect to
contemporary history. Russell was born into a world without flush toilets. In
court testimony someone tells of carrying “the slops” through Bible House to
drop them down a drain. I’m old enough to remember my stay in a forty room
mansion in Ohio where the only facilities were a two-door wooden outhouse. Most
of our readers aren’t that old. Russell was born into a world of no garbage
collection, where the streets were rank with filth. He walked down streets
littered with the leavings of draft animals and their owners. He was taught by
teachers who were outnumbered by students one hundred to one, who had little
education of their own and few resources to improve what they had.
We are disconnected from the social
issues of Russell’s day. Allegheny City and Pittsburgh were by reputation
better, more peaceful cities than some of the more easterly American cities.
Yet, they were filled with prostitution (we give details) and violence. A
gruesome murder took place just doors from the Russell’s home. The Western
states were subject to Native American uprisings and brutal repression. The
period from the 1870s to the 1890s was one of re-occurring financial
depression. Shoeing the feet of children was a major concern and a major
expense. Scandal was the norm in politics. People were willing to see the
period as “the last days” because it was violent, politically unstable, and
seemed very much to be exactly what Jesus had predicted.
An English writer described
Allegheny City and Pittsburgh in terms of the industrial area of Staffordshire.
Writing in 1859 he said that “there are the same red brick housed and workshops,
the same smoke, the same uneven streets – from the heavy weights drawn over
them – and at night, the glare of the iron furnaces at work.” The houses were
built “close up to the very tops of the hill-sides, and presenting something of
the appearance which the old town of Edinburgh does when viewed from off the
Calton Hill or Arthur’s Seat.” Pittsburgh and Allegheny City were large,
rambling, ill designed places. In 1853 the combined population was about one
hundred ten thousand. It was an area of churches. We detail Russell’s
associations with several denominations.
***
This was the era of Louisa Alcott’s Little Women. Read
it. It will help you connect to the age we consider. Pay attention to the details.
Note the cold, rat-infested house; consider the poverty, the infant mortality,
the approach to morals and religious infidelity. The era in which these events transpire
is both familiar and alien. This was an era of invention. The telephone was a
marvel. Cities were electrified, but most homes were without electricity. They
had gas if there were fortunate, oil lamps or candles if not. Few saw a telephone.
The Penny press and letter from friends connected one to the outside world.
The American west was still the Wild
West. The year Russell met Jonas Wendell the first transcontinental rail tracks
were joined at Promontory Point, Utah. New and more powerful steam engines were
marvels. Indian wars replaced the Civil War. When the Allegheny Bible Study
Class was re-examining old belief, grasshoppers plagued Kansas, Nebraska and
Missouri, eating varnish off furniture, paint off houses and peaches to the
pits. War and rumors of war were
everywhere. The Franco-Prussian was altered the face of Europe. Russia and
Turkey fought, both brutalizing civilians, especially women and little girls.
Fears of a general European war found a place in newspapers. Discontent and
abuses in the Reconstruction South led to talk of a second Civil War. The
United States had unsettled claims against the United Kingdom related to the
Confederate raider the CSA Alabama. There was talk of war. An English parliamentarian
suggested a test of arms. Cooler heads within the British government noted that
while America maintained a severely reduced army, it had a million men trained
to arms and baptized in blood. Any war with America would in high probability
cost the empire the newly formed Canadian Confederation.
Disasters beyond human control
brought with them a sense of impending or wrought Divine judgment. Currency and
credit manipulation by European banks, prominently the Bank of England,
amounted to a quiet war against the United States. Credit manipulation brought
consequences beyond those foreseen in boardrooms. Labor issues, oppressive working
conditions and issues of social equality led to riot and insurrection. The year
of Barbour and Russell’s grand missionary tour saw Pittsburgh burned and
Federal troops engaged in battle with railroad workers. A large segment of
Americans embraced protectionism. Depressions swept America and Europe. “Banker,”
always a ‘dirty word,’ became a blacker pejorative.
A pope died and another was elected.
Many Protestants (and interestingly, some Catholics) saw the popes and the
Roman Catholic Church as the embodiment of the more negative prophetic images. American
Protestants watched Catholic affairs in that light. The pope was variously seen
as the Biblical “man of sin” or the Anti-Christ. The Roman Church was seen as
Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots. By the last quarter of the Nineteenth
Century, a significant number saw Protestant churches as the Harlot’s
Daughters. Interactions with Catholics were suspect and scrutinized as a
possible fulfillment of prophecy. Otto von Zech, a German-born Evangelical
Lutheran clergyman was expelled from the Ohio Synod in part for refusing to characterize
the Catholic Church as Anti-Christ.
Our ancestors were not (taken as a
whole) stupid, nor were they more gullible than our contemporaries. But their
frame of reference was different. While the shift to a secularist society had
begun, most were still profoundly religious. Religion was a social and political
power, influencing –sometimes irrationally – public decisions. If they were
ready to believe what might seem to us irrational doctrines, we should note
that the same tendency exists today, though more often expressed in conspiracy
theory, political polemic, or ill conceived private and public policy. We haven’t
improved; we have only changed focus. The characters in this history deserve a
sympathetic consideration.
***
This is a far different book than we
envisioned. We anticipated a slim volume somewhat like our biography of
Barbour. We believed the basic facts were known, though as presented by most
writers the story lacked detail. As our research evolved, we made format
decision, some reluctantly. Among the decisions we hesitatingly made was that
leading us to present more or less extensive biographies of the principals. You
will find most of those in volume one. We believe these biographical excursions
are necessary for a comprehensive understanding of the Watch Tower movement’s
early years.
B.
W. Schulz
