Guest post by Gary
‘Neutralizing a perceived subversive threat': Censorship, threats, persecutions and prosecutions used to keep 'at arm’s length' a peaceable religious community in World War One America
At 3 pm on 24 February
1918, Pastor William A. Baker was due to deliver a Bible lecture entitled
"The End of the World, Relation of the World War Thereto" at Grants
Pass, Oregon. Accommodation had been booked in advance and advertised several
days before in the local press. However, on arriving both the speaker and those
invited to attend were surprised to find the doors "nailed up" and
their access barred. Baker, a Portland resident small in stature but known to
his friends as the “Little Giant," was invited to discuss the matter on
the following day and appeared, with a colleague, at the court house before a
committee of 30-40 men from the local counsel of defence along with the Mayor,
the Sheriff and the Manager of the Opera House he was to use. His introductory
'good morning' greeting met with silence. He was promptly told to answer the
following four questions with only a simple yes or no: Are you a member of the
Red Cross? Are you a subscriber to the Liberty loan? Have you purchased thrift
stamps or savings certificates? Are you wholeheartedly and unreservedly backing
the government's war program? To each question he answered 'no', but when he
attempted to qualify his answer to the final question, he was told that no
debate would be tolerated. He was then instructed to leave the room and a vote
was taken to deny him the right to speak at any event locally or to distribute
literature in the city. (1)
So, what had led to the
cancellation? The local counsel of defence had read newspaper reports
concerning actions taken against members of the International Bible Students
Association in Canada, which suggested, to their mind at least, that the
'Russellites' - as they were colloquially called in America - would be
unsupportive of the war, perhaps disloyal, and even seditious. Consequently,
the Ashland Tidings reported on the
same incident a few days later using the heading 'Pro German Not Allowed to
Lecture'. In many respects this minor episode in the life of an American city
in the Great War mirrored the wider attitude of American society toward the
Bible Students for the following year. Until it was over, and the national aim
achieved, Bible Students such as Baker would barely be tolerated. Even after
the conflict, when the attitude of many in society had softened, their
reputation remained. It was not hard for Bible Students to contemplate a
teaching they had held long before they had become so unpopular: they were
"no part of the world" but were, rather, "citizens of a heavenly
kingdom". (2)
Three days later the Rogue River Courier reported on its
front page of the sudden investigation of the Brooklyn, New York, office of the
International Bible Students under the heading 'Government Raids Russell
Headquarters', noting that literature had been seized and turned over to the
public attorney who was to determine if it was seditious. It commented that the
raid was "said to have been made in connection with the arrest recently of
followers of the Russell sect in Toronto, Ont., where five persons are on trial
with publishing and circulating a book called The Finished Mystery". No mention was made by this issue of
the paper regarding the earlier events in Grants Pass, but the connection was
made in public consciousness, and for many the earlier decision now appeared
justified by reason of the government's more recent action. (3)
By way of protest, a
letter from Pearl Easterling, a local Bible Student, appeared in the Ashland Tidings on 4 March 1918
attempting to correct the 'Pro German' headline of a few days earlier. It
explained that the Bible Students were not opposing the war measures but, since
the US government saw reason to make allowance for those whose conscience
didn't allow them to fight, simply making use of this right. It explained that
it was "preposterous to suppose that the I.B.S.A. is pro-German when its
members first suffered martyrdom at the hands of the German autocracy"
where, it claimed, "over one hundred had been shot for their religious
convictions." However, the protest fell on deaf ears as increasing
newspaper reports appeared, in Oregon and elsewhere, of Bible Students being
arrested for distributing literature that was under suspicion. (4) In Medford,
Oregon, for instance, a crowd of several hundred threatened violence. George
Maynard, whose house was being used as the centre of local Bible Student
activity, was seized by a mob who stripped him and "painted a huge iron
cross upon his body, giving him until Monday to leave" according to the
Laramie, Wyoming, Boomerang, of 15 April 1918. The paper also warned locals of
the imminent arrival of a certain Pastor W.A. Baker who was due to speak at the
Lyric Theatre. The intention of the article, headed "100 Percent
Americans. Awake!", was clear. (5)
"Suppressing
one densely packed theological rant"
Bible Students could
never be 100% American, and this was a time when anything less just wasn't
enough. To many these reports justified the claim that Bible Students were
seditious. Besides, even if this had not been the intent of the Bible Students,
the increased public attention given to them served notice to any would-be
traitors that Uncle Sam was not to be messed with. Religious historian Philip
Jenkins noted that the setting involved one publication in particular:
In 1918, when federal and state authorities were deeply concerned about pro-German subversion and sabotage across the United States, much of their activity focused on suppressing one densely packed theological rant, namely The Finished Mystery. (6)
Indeed it was this Bible Student book which highlighted their premillennialist views and the profound indifference of Bible Students to 'Babylon the Great' and her daughters, the religions of the world which had too often compromised the standards of God in exchange for favors received at the hands of worldly governments. It is usually assumed that The Finished Mystery was an attack on all religions other than Bible Students. It is true that it was highly critical of the role of religion in supporting the war, but not all clergymen were condemned. In fact, it quoted from two at length who were as equally disgusted with those who praised the Prince of Peace on the one hand, while championing the God of war with the other. (7)
The authorities took
great exception to pages 247-253, especially the following comment:
Nowhere
in the New Testament is patriotism (a narrow minded hatred of other people's)
encouraged. Everywhere and always murder in its every firm is forbidden. And
yet under the guise of patriotism civil governments of the earth demand of
peace-loving men the sacrifice of themselves and their loved ones and the
butchery of their fellows, and hail it as a duty demanded by the laws of
heaven. (8)
When the US Department
of Justice termed distribution of the book a violation of the Espionage Act on
14 March 1918 it started their campaign at "Neutralizing a perceived
subversive threat", as Lon Strauss has aptly commented. (9) It only became
a matter of time before various states took action against Bible Students
responsible for both its publication and distribution. Just three days later at
Third Avenue, San Bernardino, California, a small number of believers met in a
private house to discuss the Bible. On this evening something unusual happened.
A knock was heard on the door and four men outside asked if they could join in
with the study. They were welcomed in, given Bibles and joined in the
conversation. Afterward, one of the men approached a female believer, Emma J.
Martin a 48-year-old widow of a well-known local doctor, to request and receive
a copy of The Finished Mystery book. What
she did not know was that these men were working as government agents and had
deliberately visited to spy on the group. Consequently, the following day she
and three others among the group were arrested and imprisoned on charges of
sedition. As a Christian, Emma Martin did not believe anything in 1918, a year
after the United States entered the war, that she hadn't believed in 1916, a
year before America joined the conflict. While she had determined her stand on
war sometime before, she had not approached the men intent on converting them to
prevent their involvement in the draft. Rather, they had deceptively sought her
assistance. (10)
Threats, intimidation
and invasion of the home and confiscation of Bible literature, usually at the
hands of the American Protective League, became common. For example, on 27
March 1918, at Corpus Christie, Texas, Mrs Clara Hanke was threatened and
attacked and her home raided with Bible study textbooks confiscated. On two
occasions in the following month the raids were repeated, accompanied by more
threats and by the invasion of her bedroom when she was resting on her bed.
(11) Similarly, in March 1918, at Alba, Missouri, one hour before midnight the
home of 71 year old Mary E. Thayer was invaded without warrant, her person
threatened and her effects seized.(12) Likewise, Alta Randall's home at Tulsa,
Oklahoma, was entered by officers who confiscated Bible study textbooks without
warrant, accompanied by abusive, threatening and violent language. (13)
'Slackers'
Labelling individuals in small close-knit communities aggravated underlying
tensions, of course, and it is not hard to understand why many citizens started
to avoid Bible Students in case it was somehow thought they supported their views.
The social and financial implications of such actions would create further
hardship for the businesses, families and individuals involved in an event that
foreshadowed the experiences of many Jehovah's Witnesses in America some 21
years later. And yet, as we know, many did face such acrimony. August Swanson,
a farmer from Minnesota, recalled visiting Bible Students in Spring 1918:
These
friends had refused on religious grounds to support the war in any manner. Consequently,
their neighbors and fellow townsmen had begun a boycott against them. They could
not buy or sell; they were threatened with mob violence and annoyed in various
other ways. In the public square, close to the railway station, had been
erected a large monument of concrete, painted yellow. Upon its four sides in
large black letters were all their names, with the word “SLACKERS. (14)
Scarred
for Life
Being interrogated
concerning their beliefs and religious literature by self-appointed citizens
with well-intended patriotic sympathies was unpleasant enough, but it pales
into insignificance compared to the experience of others. Stanley Young, for
instance, a physician's son from Reading, Pennsylvania, was arrested and
interrogated by Bureau of Investigation agents for several hours for distributing
Bible Student literature. During this a U.S. Attorney threatened that the
government would shoot him, while a U.S. Marshall "was toying with his
revolver and brandishing his blackjack." After releasing Young on bail,
officials continued to harass him, with one individual, possibly an APL agent,
assaulting him in a local restaurant. As a result of a concerted campaign,
Young eventually suffered a nervous breakdown and confinement in a Harrisburg
asylum. Ultimately the government filed no charges against him, but Young
recalled that the experience "enlightened me as to the character of some
Government employees and the shameful misuse of power given them." (15)
Others faced local
vigilante groups. One being John Baltzer Siebenlist of Shattuck, Oklahoma. The
Golden Age magazine of 29 September 1920 put the cause of Siebenlist's
experience down to the fact he had visited a distribution collection centre to
pick up literature for local Bible Students. But this over-simplifies a much
more complex issue, as will be explained. There were a number of factors which
aroused suspicion in the eyes of local vigilantes and had already thrown
Siebenlist to top of their hit list. The first involved nationality. Born 10
July 1888 in Satov, Russia, on the boundary of the German border, Siebenlist
immigrated to America with his family twelve years later so that he eventually
become a naturalised American. However, while Siebenlist had a name that was
obviously German - as is the case for many Americans - he continued to use
German as his first language. As such he might easily have been considered an
"enemy alien". Secondly, when he signed the draft form on 5 June
1917, he claimed a conscientious objection for religious reasons, stating also
that he was an IBSA minister. But the local registrar seemed unconvinced and
added a note, "He clerks in grocery practically all the time."(16)
This likely triggered local problems for him since, in some people's eyes, it
seemed as if he was trying to get a ministerial exemption, when his
"real" job was grocery clerk. Thirdly, at school his son Theodore was
known to have refused to buy a Red Cross pin as early as September 1917.(17)
But the final straw, as far as the locals were concerned, came in 1918 when the
Bible Students were perceived to be seditious as a result of The Finished
Mystery ban. Retribution followed swiftly. Members of the local council of
defence picked up Siebenlist at work and took him to Main Street where they
publicly humiliated him by forcing him to stand on a copy of The Finished Mystery, kiss the flag, and
swear allegiance to America. (18) But this display of forced loyalty satisfied
the vigilantes only temporarily. Since Siebenlist was still a marked man, when
he later visited a dispatch depot to collect literature for the local Bible
Student class he was again in trouble. Theodore later recalled:
Dad
was picked up again and held another three days. This time he was fed very
little. His release this time was another story. About midnight three men
simulated a jail ‘break-in.’ They put a sack over dad’s head and marched him to
the west edge of town barefooted. This was rough terrain and full of sandburs.
Here they stripped him to the waist and whipped him with a buggy whip that had
a wire at the tip. Then they applied hot tar and feathers, leaving him for dead. He managed to get up and walk
and crawl around town toward the southeast. Then he intended to head north and
home. However, a friend of his found him and brought him home. I never saw him
that night, but it was a terrible shock to mom, especially with a tiny baby in
the house, and Grandma Siebenlist fainted when she saw him. My brother John had
been born only a few days before all of this happened. However, mom held up
under all the strain very well, never losing sight of Jehovah’s protective
power ... Grandma and Aunt Katie, dad’s half-sister, began nursing him back to
life. The tar and feathers were imbedded in his flesh; so they used goose
grease to heal up the wounds and gradually the tar came off. . . .
Dad never saw their faces, but he recognized their voices and knew who his
assailants were. He never told them. In fact, it was hard to get him ever to
talk about it. Yet, he carried those scars to the grave.” (19)
Perhaps the most
notable case of persecution occurred on 30 April 1918 at Walnut Ridge,
Arkansas, and involved four male Bible Students imprisoned for selling The
Kingdom News. Charles Franke, Edward J. French, CB Griffin and 61-year-old WB
Duncan were taken from the jail, tarred and feathered, and driven far from
town. Duncan was compelled to walk 26 miles to his home and barely recovered,
while Griffin was virtually blinded and died from the assault a few months
later. A Mrs D. Van Hoeson also had been jailed but appears to have been
spared, while at a similar time, in Mammoth Springs, Arkansas, Charles Franke's
sister, Minna B. Franke, was mobbed and compelled to close out a $10,000 stock
in one day and leave town.(20) It is apparent that some local officials
protected Bible Students from vigilante mobs providing sanctuary in local
prisons until the fever-pitch mentality passed. Yet, in other cases, these
openly encouraged individuals taking the law in their own hands. For instance, The
Golden Age also recorded the experience of J. Eagleston, who had been
jailed for 15 days in prison tanks, some with no bed or mattresses,
insufficient covering or food, before receiving his trial. When the jury
disagreed, 5 to 7, the Judge suggested in court that "if there is no law
to settle these cases, they will be settled, if it is done by the American
people themselves."(21) What did he mean?
Opposition
faced by the entire community
All faiths holding
traditional pacifist ideals experienced considerable pressure during this time,
such as the historic peace churches of the Mennonites, the Society of Friends
(Quakers), and the Church of the Brethren (Dunkards). And individuals from
newer faiths holding fast to their pacifist convictions included members of the
Christadelphians, Churches of Christ, Seventh Day Adventists and the
Pentecostalists. But the IBSA appears to have been unique in that it grabbed
attention for more than just the conscientious objection of its males of
drafted age. These 'new kids on the block', with no earlier peace history to
fall back on, experienced opposition affecting all levels of the group, young
and old, male and female, from those some might consider 'rank and file'
members to several leading directors serving at their Brooklyn headquarters. Ultimately
government raids of the premises led to the trial of Joseph Rutherford, the
president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, the Society’s
secretary-treasurer, two co-authors of The Finished Mystery, three other
members of the Brooklyn headquarters staff and the Society’s Italian
translator, under charges of attempting to cause insubordination and refusal of
duty in the armed forces and obstructing the recruiting and enlisting of men
for war.(22)
At some public expense,
Judge Harland B. Howe from Vermont was transferred in to officiate. His
appointment was no accident. Earlier he had presided over the case of The
United States v. Clarence H. Waldron, involving a Baptist minister with
millenarian beliefs and strong Pentecostal tendencies. Waldron had become
unpopular with a section of his congregation who held more traditional views
and sought opportunity to alienate him from the community, finding reason in
his pacifism to accuse him of attempting to undermine the U.S. government in a
time of war. At the trial Judge Howe did not allow testimony regarding the
anti-Pentecostal religious prejudice of Waldron’s accusers. As a result, the
jury returned a guilty verdict and Howe sentenced Waldron to 15 years in
federal prison. (23) It was apparent that something similar was expected of
Howe in the Rutherford case, and he did not disappoint. The religious
motivation of the Bible Student accusers was ignored and, not surprisingly, the
IBSA directors were all found guilty of the charges made, leaving Judge Howe to
conclude that that these Bible Students were "A greater danger than a
division of the German Army". Consequently, the seven directors each
received 20 year sentences to be served at the Atlanta Penitentiary. (24)
Post-war the case was
reviewed and recognised as a miscarriage of justice, so enabling Rutherford and
his colleagues to be released. In 1919 Judge Ward concluded:
The
defendants in this case did not have the temperate and impartial trial to which
they were entitled and for that reason the judgment was reversed. (25)
Ironically the original
trial and sentence had been heavily reported by the press throughout the United
States, including excerpts from the forbidden book, to the extent that
"the press did the very thing the Russellites had been sentenced to twenty
years for doing, and gave it more publicity than the followers of Russell could
possibly have given it."(26) Additionally, the miscarriage of justice
supported their Biblical distrust of manmade governments (27) while their
imprisonment made martyrs of the IBSA leaders and set their anti-war agenda for
the following 100 years, starting with a resolution they sent to the Washington
Arms Conference on 27 November 1921 making it clear that IBSA would not be
involved in any future war, "in any form."(28) In 1931 they sent a
further resolution to numerous world leaders stating that, "our faith
forbids ... us from engaging in war or in any other enterprise that would work
harm or injury to mankind." It also made rulers aware of the new name they
had taken on, "Jehovah's witnesses." (29)
Heads
held high above the parapet
By way of a corrective,
it should be repeated that Bible Students were not, by any means, the only
group treated adversely in war time America. Regular surveillance, bullying,
public scorn promoted by newspaper propaganda, vigilantism and occasional mob
violence were in no way limited to them. In the prevailing political climate
any individual, religious or political, perceived through their actions as not
being 100% behind the State initiatives aroused suspicion, especially if they
had a German surname or origin and even if they maintained a low profile and
displayed care in their speech. But the high profile ministry of active Bible
Students, directors and colporteurs in particular, who saw themselves as
"ambassadors for Christ", ensured their heads were always held high
above the parapet and, in so doing, made them most vulnerable to attack. Given
the wartime paranoia, their identification, investigation and persecution
became inevitable.
The last word on this
subject can be left to William Ray Walker who summed up the situation as
follows:
The Justice
Department's tenacious pursuit of the Russellites occurred in an environment where society interpreted even slight
deviations as threats to its survival. The government harassed and censured the
Russellites for nothing more than expressing and teaching their religious doctrines. The case never would
have progressed in an era when America felt secure within their communities
because the Russellite divergence was strictly religious and did not challenge
the social, political, or economic status." (30)
References:
(1) Rogue River Courier, 25 February 1918, 1
(2) Ashland Tidings, 28 February 1918, 8.
For Bible Students self-perception see John 15:18, John 18:36, Philippians 3:11
(3) Rogue River Courier, 28 February 1918, 1
(4) Ashland Tidings, 4 March 1918, 4
(5) Laramie Boomerang, Wyoming, 15 April
1918
(6) The Great and Holy War, 141
(7) The two, both
well-known pacifists, were Charles Edward Jefferson, the pastor of Broadway
Tabernacle Church in New York City, and Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of the Church
of the Messiah, Park Avenue and 34th Street, New York City. Holmes later became
a leading light in the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and took delight
in the numerous cases won by Witnesses at the Supreme Court which created
precedents and, in so doing, established the civil rights of religious people
of all faiths in America during the 1940s and early 1950s
(8) The Finished Mystery, published 1917,
247
(9) A Paranoid State: The American Public,
Military Surveillance and the Espionage Act of 1917, submitted to
University of Kansas for graduate degree 2012, 75
(10) The New Era Enterprise, Volume 11, No.
13, 13 July 1920, 4. TheGolden Age
magazine, 29 September 1920, 717.
(11) The Golden Age, 29 September 1920, 713
(12) Ibid, 716
(13) Ibid
(14) Bible Student News, Summer 1936, Volume
2, No.1
(15) Young to the
Attorney General, 5 April 1920. RG 60, Records of the Department of Justice.
Quoted in Only the Heretics are Burning:
Democracy and Repression in World War I America, William Ray Walker,
University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2008, 287
(16) Draft registration
papers of John Baltzer Siebenlist, dated 5 June 1917
(17) 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses,
99-100
(18) Boynton Index, Oklahoma, 3 May 1918, 6
(19) 1975 Yearbook of Jehovah's Witnesses, 99-100
(20) The Golden Age, 29 September 1920, 715,
713
(21) The Golden Age, 29 September 1920, 716
(22) Details of the
investigation and trial appeared in The
Case of the International Bible Students Association, a 4-page tract
written in 1919 by Bible Student Ernest Sexton.
(23) Espionage in Windsor: Clarence H. Waldron
and Patriotism in World War 1, The Proceedings of the Vermont Historical
Society, Gene Sessions, Summer 1993, vol.61, No. 3
(24) The New York Herald, 22 June 1918, part
2, 5
(25) Brooklyn
Eagle, 15 May 1919, 1
(26) Preachers Present Arms: The Role of the American
Churches and Clergy in World Wars I and II, with Some Observations on the War
in Vietnam, by Ray H. Abrams, revised 1969, 183
(27) Psalm 146:3, Jeremiah 10:23, Daniel 2:44, Matthew 4:8,9, Revelation 12:9
(28) Resolution
reprinted in The Golden Age, 7 December
1921, 138
(29) Watchtower, 15 September 1931, 278-279
(30) Only the Heretics are Burning, 287
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