My preface as outline draft.
Preface One – By R. M. de Vienne
It’s
taken longer to write this volume of Separate Identity than we
anticipated, but as with the two previous books, few of our expectations have stood
up under the light of better research. We believed that a second volume would
complete our research. It has not done so. There will be, assuming we live long
enough to complete it, a third and final volume.
This
volume differs in format from its predecessor. The first volume follows a loose
chronological order. Because of its narrow focus primarily on the years 1879 to
1882, this volume is a series of essays each focusing on an aspect of Watch
Tower transition into a separate, identifiable belief system. There is a looser
chronological order here; and the chapters occasionally overlap each other in
subject matter. As before we elected to present this history in as much detail
as we can, hoping thereby to take our readers into the spirit of the times.
Omission seems to us to be misdirection.
Volume
3 will focus on the fragmentation that followed 1881. It is partially written,
but much hard research remains. And as always, we’re hampered by lack of
resources. We have few issues of key magazines. We do not have anything like a
complete run of A. P. Adams’ Spirit of the Word. We miss key years of J.
H. Paton’s The World’s Hope. A paper published in California exists as a
few clippings pasted into a scrapbook. A booklet written by Barbour seems to
have been lost. We do not have any of the first issues of Jones’ Day Star. We
appreciate help locating things like these.
Now,
let me tell you about volume two. This volume examines the continuing
controversy between Russell and Barbour. One writer suggested that it was short
lived. It lasted until Barbour’s death in 1905. We tell you the story up to 1882.
It is more complex than most writers appreciate, and its complexity explains
the development of key Watch Tower doctrines, at least one of which persists
until today.
We
tell you about the Watch Tower’s principals struggle to preserve the body of
believers, to transition Barbourite believers into Watch Tower adherents. We
tell you about their earliest missionary journeys, drawing much of this from
sources not referenced by anyone else. We introduce you to people mentioned
only once or twice in Zion’s Watch Tower but who played an important
role in its earliest years. We tell you about the nature of the earliest
congregations and fellowships and how they were formed. Again, we draw on first
hand experiences not found in any
history of the movement. We tell you about the reaffirmation of old doctrines
and the discussions behind that.
The
movement attracted clergy to its ranks. We discuss this in some detail, naming
names, telling the story as we could uncover it of several clergy turned Watch
Tower believers. In 1881 Russell and a few others organized and provided
initial financing for the work. We provide details not found elsewhere, and we
correct a widely-spread error. We tell you about the start of the publishing
ministry and the development of the Priesthood of All Believers doctrine among
Watch Tower adherents. A key event was the printing and circulation of Food
for Thinking Christians. Though the Watchtower Society declined to share a
key document, offering no explanation as to why a document from 1881-1882 should
be kept secret, we offer our readers a full discussion of this small book’s
circulation and its effects on readership. With the circulation of Food
new workers entered the field. The Watchtower society has ignored these,
especially John B. Adamson, in its histories. We do not know why, but we think
the reasons multifarious. Adamson and some others among the earliest
missionaries left the Watch Tower movement. Watchtower writers tend to ignore
the contributions of those who deflected from the movement. It is probably safe
to say that much of this history is unknown to Watchtower researchers. It’s not
their focus, and they’ve left it unexplored.
An
important part of this era’s story is the spread of Watch Tower doctrine to
various ethnic groups within the United States and to other lands. So we tell
you about work among foreign language groups in the United States. The Zechs
and a Norwegian sea captain are part of this story. We tell you about the early
work in Canada, the United Kingdom, China, and other lands. We discuss at
length the history of a man mentioned with favor in Jehovah’s Witnesses:
Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom. His story is far different from what the
author of that book presumed. We tell you about the early work in Liberia.
[This history appeared first as B. W. Schulz: “Watch Tower Faith in Liberia: A
Conflict of Faith and Authority,” Nssuka Journal of History, University
of Nigeria, Volume 4, 2017, page 31ff.] Other lands come into this picture.
Almost none of this has been published anywhere except in the original
documents.
Eighteen eighty-one was a key year in
Watch Tower history. Most of those who mention that year’s events misstate
them. We do our best to correct the misdirection and misstatement common among
recent writers. We think we provide a more complete picture of the Watch
Tower’s earliest years, a more balanced picture than found elsewhere.
Read Mr. Schulz’ Introductory Essay.
It clarifies issues that confuse some writers. It puts Russell and the Watch
Tower movement in a historical perspective often misstated or ignored by recent
writers. A later chapter takes up attempts by historians and sociologists to
place the Watch Tower movement within one of the current theoretical frameworks.
We suggest that they ignore key elements of the Watch Tower belief system so
that their theories are questionable.
Acknowledgements
Before considering some important
issues, we have some housekeeping issues. First, we have many to thank for
their assistance:
[continue]
We
have received a steady stream of queries asking if our work is sponsored by the
Watchtower Society. It is not. We have corresponded with them from time to
time. Lately they have ignored our letters which are, in my opinion not at all
inflammatory. [We are, after all, historians, not polemicists.] I herewith
reproduce our last letter to them, dated to the end of July 2018, which has to
the date of publication gone unanswered. Judge for yourself. Is this letter
hurtful? Accusatory? In any way? I cannot explain why it remains unanswered,
except to suggest that the Watchtower wishes to control the narrative and finds
a detailed history, no matter how neutral, threatening.
[Insert letter here]
Formatting and Grammar
We
have retained the spelling and grammar of those we quote, and we use quotations
freely. Much of the source material upon which we’ve relied is not easily
accessible or has been misrepresented by other writers. A quotation from the
original helps relieve our readers of the task of finding this material. Of
course, a really interested researcher will not rely on our quotations if they
can find the original, nor should they. So unless you find a note attached to a
quotation, presume that the italics and small capitals are as they are in the
originals.
We
should note, too, that though we have quoted an author, we may not and
sometimes most definitely do not agree with them. Usually this will be plain
from context. Occasionally in a footnote we describe a disagreement. Without
exception, polemicists from the past are a disagreeable, dishonest, and vulgar
bunch. We’ve still quoted from some, but you now know our opinion in the
plainest terms. And our opinion is not based on their opposition to Watch Tower
theology, especially as expressed in the Russell era, but on a consistent
misrepresentation of Watch Tower adherents, misquotation or out of context
quotation of original source material, an unwarranted assumption of saintly
character by some who are truly disreputable men.
With
volume one of this work we were able to follow a mostly chronological order.
Because this volume considers a very narrow year range – mostly the years from
1879 to 1882 – this is not possible. We present you with a series of essays
each of which considers an aspect of Watch Tower history. You will find some repetition
of points. We’ve tried to limit this, but that it occurs is unavoidable.
My View
Bruce’s
introduction addressed the difference between Age-to-Come and Adventism and
more commonly held millennial view quite nicely. I will add only one point, a
quotation from Ernest Sandeen’s The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and
American Millenairanism, 1800-1930. Dr. Sandeen puts to shame those who
confound Adventism with mainstream millennial belief, and he does it quite
politely:
[insert quotation]
If
you haven’t read B. W. Schulz’ introductory essay, please do so now. I fully
agree with what he has written, and I have some thoughts to add to it. A major,
in fact the major, problem with most of what is written about the
Russell years is a consistent misunderstanding and misrepresentation of
American and British religious history. There are probably many reasons for
this, but within my experience the two most noticeable are confirmation bias
and dependence on secondary sources. These are interdependent. A certain class
or writers supposes that because someone with some sort of college degree wrote
it, it must be true. This is evident in the tendency to track Russellism back
to Adventism only on the basis of what another wrote. Few ask, “What is the
evidence and where does it lead?”
An
example of over dependence on secondary sources is found in William Sims
Bainbridge’s The Sociology of Religious Movements.
After some pages discussing W. Miller, E. G. White and C. T. Russell,
Bainbridge observes: “Russell is quite different from either Miller or White.
He was not given to visions, but did have a will to dominate that Miller lacked.
In the absence of good biographies or access to original documents such as
letters, it is hard to get the measure of the man.”
This
tells us far more about Bainbridge’s research than it does about the state of
Russell- related research when he wrote. [1997]. He was dependent on Curry and
Rogerson, using them in preference to the available Watchtower Society product,
Jehovah’s Witnesses: Proclaimers of God’s Kingdom, apparently because
they had some sort of academic standing that Watchtower writers lack. But even
in 1997 neither of their works stood up under close examination. As for
Bainbridge’s assertion that researchers lacked material, many thousands of
pages of Russell’s writing were easily available. There is no evidence that he
read any of it. The fault is not his alone. It was a common one twenty years
ago and remains common today. The two most recent books by known scholars that
touch on Russell and the movement he fostered suffer from lack of in-depth
research into original sources, confirmation bias, and a misunderstanding of
American religious history – and of British religious history. So, while they
are fairly solid introductions to Watchtower history and Witness culture, they
are fundamentally flawed. There is in these works a reliance on myth and
superficial research. I am not the only one to confront this issue when
considering Millenarian belief systems. James West Davidson noted it, writing:
“Few historians even those whose province is religious history, have read the
Revelation of John or the many voluminous commentaries written about it by
seventeenth and eighteenth century Englishmen.” Our somewhat wider observation
is that those writing on our topic have a superficial understanding of the
Millenarian experience out of which Russellism came, or, for that matter, the
American religious experience. Those more recent writers from the United
Kingdom do not seem to understand British Millenarian belief at all.
Despite
claims that they have done so, they have not read what the principal actors in
this drama wrote. They meet names of those about which they know little beyond
what an online ‘encyclopedia’ may tell them and write as if they knew these
characters intimately. Yet, they have not read what the principals wrote. So we
read of Storrs, Wendell, Barbour and others, but find their lives, beliefs and
history are misstated, taken out of context, and in some cases we find frank
fabrication. Imagination replaces solid research. For a historian or
sociologist to do this is to perpetrate a fraud on his readers. That they
failed to read what these men wrote is self-evident. And it is without excuse. Zion’s
Watch Tower; The Bible Examiner; The World’s Crisis; The
Restitution; The Herald of the Morning and their American and
British predecessors and contemporaries are not impossible to find. If you
write about these men and the others that populate Watch Tower history but fail
to read what they said, how are you an honest narrator?
There
is an abundance of material available, and some authors have read parts of it.
But characteristically those who write Watchtower history don’t make vital
connections. Russellism, the Watch Tower movement in the Russell era is a late
19th Century expression of a fundamental belief system that has its
roots in the apostolic era. More specifically, Russell-era Watch Tower theology
is an expression of Millenarian belief systems common in Europe from the 16th
Century forward. Do not misconstrue this for an endorsement of Watch Tower
theology as expressed in the Russell era. I am only pointing toward the
‘family’ of belief systems to which we can trace it.
[Introduce new section here]
In this short profile, I will take you no further back
than the 16th Century. I will focus on British and American
millenarianism. There were similar systems in most of Europe, but Russell’s
acquaintance with them was slight. He came to German millenarianism through
Seiss, whose references to it are few and indistinct. There were French, Swiss,
Polish, Bohemian and Italian believers, but we think Russell knew next to nothing
about them.
Historians
differ
This is a history blog. It does not exist for any other purpose. Your comment may be your sincere belief, but it is out of place here. And in point of fact there are a number of organizations that give away free copies of the Bible.
Ordinarily, I'd take your comment down as a violation of our rules. Instead, I'm using it as an occasion to restate our prime rule: This is a history blog. Comments should be relevant to Watchtower history. People of many faiths, academics, and other writers visit this site. All are welcome to post comments relevant to the history articles we post. None are welcome to advertise their faith or engage in a polemic. This blog exists only to present our research and articles by others that represent well-documented historical exposition. Polemical comments are never welcome.
addenda:
Dear Unknown,
I took down your temper tantrum, and I will not allow any further comments from you. I think you represent your religion accurately, and it is people such as yourself that convinced me it could not possibly be 'truth.' You do not act as a Christian should; you do not know your own religion; and you're factually incorrect in your statements.
I've informed the blog admins to delete any comment from yourself.