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 “debased 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.
I think Jones became an atheist. I don't understand why he made this profound change. As you rightly pointed out, other former collaborators of Russell, maintained themselves in the wake of millenarian literalism, but Jones became something else, completely different, even opposite. I wonder what attracted him to Russell's theology in the beginning, perhaps he was never really a believer in the Watch Tower movement. What do you say Jerome?
ReplyDeleteI think Bruce established that his interest started with Herald of the Morning, and his first articles for ZWT fitted its theology. I suspect he started with good intentions, but once he slipped he sort of gave up. And then went from bad to worse. This series of articles only represents research I did some years ago, with a bit of updating. I believe that Bruce is filling in many of the gaps in his research which will of course focus more on the earlier days before it all went wrong,
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