Ministers and politics: A brief history

This transcript has been adapted from the attached audio. It may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(Reading from The Divided States of America? page 238)

In the mid-nineteenth century, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was pending before Congress. Its passage would have expanded slavery into areas previously designated as free territory. A group of three thousand New England clergymen signed a petition against its passage, which they sent to the United States Senate. The proslavery senators were apoplectic at the fact that (three thousand) preacherswould dare to interfere in the political life of the nation. Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, perhaps best known for his debates with Abraham Lincoln, said, “We find a large body of preachers, perhaps three thousand, following the lead of a circular which was issued by the Abolitionist confederates in this body, calculated to deceive and mislead the public, have here come forward, with atrocious falsehood and atrocious calumny against this Senate, desecrated the pulpit, and prostituted the sacred desk to the miserable and corrupting influence of party politics.”

(Lest you think this is a recent issue of controversy.)

“These political preachers ought to be rebuked,” Douglas went on to say, “and required to confine themselves to their vocation.” Senator James Mason of Virginia added his voice to the baying of protestors, denouncing the action of the clergymen as an absolute abomination: “I understand this petition to come from a class who have put aside their character as citizens. It comes from a class who style themselves in the petition, ministers of the Gospel and not citizens… . Sir, ministers of the Gospel are unknown to this government, and God forbid the day should ever come when they shall be known to it.”

Now, one of my personal heroes, Sam Houston, who at that time a senator from the state of Texas, quit whittling his wood that he usually was whittling while he was listening to speeches, responded. He rose to his feet and said,

“I do not think there is anything very derogatory to our institutions in the ministers of the Gospel expressing their opinions. They have a right to do it. No man can be a minister without first being a man. He has political rights; he also has the rights of a missionary of the Savior, and he is not disenfranchised by his vocation…He has a right to contribute, as far he thinks necessary, to the sustentation of institutions. He has a right to interpose his voice as one of its citizens against the adoption of any measure which he believes will injure the nation.”

Now, of course, it needs to be remembered that Houston was a Unionist, anti-slavery senator from Texas. And later, as governor of Texas, campaigned against succession. When Texas did vote to succeed by plebiscite, he resigned as governor and predicted, in a speech he gave on the front porch of the governor’s mansion in Texas, that succession would be a catastrophe for Texas and a catastrophe for the South. And he died a broken-hearted man in 1863 with all five of this sons fighting for the Confederacy.

So this issue of preachers being involved in politics and being involved in public policy and exercising their role as citizens is hardly a new one.

During the Revolutionary period the colonial preachers, other than the Episcopalians, were so involved in supporting the Revolutionary cause that the British called them the “Rebels’ Black Regiment”, based upon their black clerical garb. I, for instance, in my own research, have only been able to find one minister who was a Baptist, in the Revolutionary period, who supported “the Crown.” His name was Morgan Edwards. He came to America from Whales when he was 34 years old, so he was already an adult. That’s the only minister I can find in my historical research that supported “the Crown.” Virtually all the rest supported the Revolution to varying degrees and many of them served as chaplains in the Revolutionary army.

The controversial nature of ministers being involved in public policy and exercising their rights as citizens is one that has been part of the history of The Republic since its founding in 1776. You’ve always had those, usually who disagree with you on the policy issue, who seek to disqualify ministers with whom they disagree.

There were all kinds of controversy about Martin Luther King and other ministers being involved in the Civil Rights revolution, people saying people ought to stick to their preaching and not get involved in public policy. Well of course the Montgomery Bus Boycott was started and was led to victory in the confines of the Dexter Memorial Baptist Church, which was literally catty-corner to the state capital in Montgomery, and led by the 26 year-old Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you look at the Civil Rights Movement, if you look at the abolitionist movement, if you look at the labor reform movement, if you look at the child-labor reform movement, every major successful reform movement in our history has been significantly led, peopled, and supported by people of religious faith and, certainly, ministers being a significant portion of that number.

The idea of whether this is controversial or not is certainly not new. It’s always been controversial, I suspect it will always be controversial because people who disagree with you on the issue would like to disqualify as many of their opponents as they can from the debate.