09 Ethical Aspects of Gift
Chapter 9 Ethical Aspects of the Gift
IF ecstacy were a state of mind and nothing but a state of mind, and a state of mind could exist without some sort of expression in conduct and character, we could probably afford to ignore the ethical problems involved in the gift of tongues, and we would probably be justified in looking upon the tongues people as pious and well intentioned folks who are given a little to vagaries in their religious lives. But religion is always related for better or for worse to ethics. And where religion fails to find an ethical expression, it assuredly falls short of any adequate definition of religion. It is certainly in the field of ethics that we are to subject religion to its ultimate test. Where a religion goes hand in hand with the development and expression of the noblest elements in human character, we are justified in arguing for the metaphysical validity of that religion. We are justified in commending it to mankind as a way of life. Where the transgression, not merely of social conventions but of those principles of righteousness upon which usefulness and happiness are builded, is the invariable associate and must be expected to be the invariable associate of a given form of religion, then we face the positive duty of the discouraging and, as far as possible, the preventing of the spread of the ways of thought of that type of religion. There is a difference to be distinguished between tolerance towards religion and tolerance towards crime. Where the expression of religion is anti-moral and positively criminal, the prevention of its propagation becomes a positive duty, and that prevention means especially the refusal to tolerate ecstatic ideas in the leadership of modern Christendom.
We have been startled by the appalling array of crimes with which the tongues movement has been associated. When we realise that the sort of physiological conditions which are responsible for speaking in tongues eliminating for the moment any psychological factor from our consideration are responsible also for crimes, we may come to realise upon what terrifically dangerous moral ground we are treading. Christianity faces the menace and has always faced the menace of the semi-insane and the semi-responsible within its own ranks.
It is a fact worthy of very serious consideration that, in identifying the tongues movement with holiness, we are identifying with holiness the criminaloid type of mind. Exactly the same type of mind and, for that matter, the same types of skull that are to be met with in the tongues peoples, are to be met with among criminals. There is no psychological and no fundamental physiological distinction which can be made between the man with criminal tendencies and the man with tendencies toward ecstatic religion. The same sort of people psychologically and physiologically are to be met with among the tongues people and in our penal institutions. It is a great deal better for society for a man to be ecstatically religious than it is for him to be a criminal. But there is always the psychological possibility of the great sinner becoming the great saint and the great saint becoming the great sinner. And there is certainly the obligation to prevent the theology of that type of mind from becoming the theology of Christendom.
It is therefore of very considerable importance that we note with care the ethical associations of the tongues movement. The most obvious moral dereliction which we face among the tongues people is the variation from generally accepted modern standards of sexual ethics. The charge of sexual irregularities against forms of Christianity is an old charge and a frequently made charge. It is in the vast majority of cases an utterly false charge. In the case of the tongues people, however, it is a proved charge. Little need be said about the polygamous practices of ancient or modern Mormonism. But we can remind ourselves of it as a gross transgression of sexual ethics and of its origin among those leaders -of the Mormons who were first also in ecstacies and visions. We can find also the element of sexual irregularity facing us in the account of the Devils of Loudun and, in fact, wherever we read the annals of witchcraft. The charge of promiscuity was made with some degree of evidence against the Camisards. The relation of Lacy and Betty Gray was a notorious scandal in the days of the greatness of the French Prophets in London. We have seen the evidences which suggest the existence of perverse sexual tendencies among the Shakers. Upon whatever psychological or physiological grounds it may be possible to justify forms of sexual perversion, if they can be justified, they still must be regarded as distinctly anti-social practices, fraught with tremendous moral danger for mankind.
Through all the histories of the tongues people there appears and reappears the doctrine of free love or spiritual marriage. It appears in one form in the Mormon practice of sealing as related to the dead. While it was apparently never a definite article in the Shaker creed, it was apparently often present in Shaker thought. It is also intimated as a possibility among some of the English Irvingites. The Irvingite movement, among the more influential tongues movements, contains in its historic appearance the least suggestion of sexual irregularity. Yet it evidenced all the psychological characteristics which under different social conditions might have found expression in gross immorality. Of the three widespread modern movements which we have studied, Irvingism was alone surrounded by the social conditions of civilisation. The primitive conditions existing in America in the early days of Shakerism and the equally primitive conditions under which Mormonism gained its ascendancy were conditions under which there was an opportunity for such immorality as would not have been tolerated, at least as an article of religion, in London and the other cities in which Irvingism flourished. This is further evidenced in the fact that in the days of the busy proselytising for Mormonism which characterised the first half of the last century, the fact of polygamy was not publicly mentioned. The great stress in preaching in connection with the Mormon missions in England, France and Germany was laid upon the claim to apostolic gifts. Mormonism has always had something about it of which it has not ethical backbone enough to be ashamed, but of which it is afraid to speak when it is face to face with culture.
Another fact which might be looked upon as having an effect in preventing Irvingism from manifesting itself upon the same moral plane as Shakerism and Mormonism, is found in the type of men who were the early Irvingite leaders. The Albury prophetic group stands upon much higher cultural and moral ground than does Ann Lee or Joseph Smith, Jr.
Sexual irregularity is always related to family life. The early histories of the Shakers contain constant references to the terrible injustices perpetrated by the Shakers in their attempts to gain control of families. When a father became a Shaker and his wife refused to, or vice versa, there was always the issue of the control of the children and, what seemed especially to interest the Shakers, the control of the family property. We have only to read accounts like that of Mary Dyer to understand just how much of bitterness and heartache was brought needlessly into life, and with what frequency lives were robbed of their joy and sunshine because of the perversions of Christianity which Shakerism preached.
Another side of the picture and at least equally tragic is that painted by women who have been the victims of Mormon polygamy. No one can ever tell the story of the blighted hopes and bitter heartaches of the women upon whose lives Mormonism has cast its shadow.
We do not here need to discuss the effects upon child life and in the upbringing of children of the sex irregularities of Mormonism and Shakerism. It is sufficient to call attention to the existence of those facts, and with those facts to note also the tendency towards the extinguishing of sympathy, love and idealism in the lives of the men and women who are responsible for those sins.
Sex crimes are not the only ethical transgressions which may be charged against the tongues movement. The part which bigotry has played in the history of Christianity is so familiar a one that it scarcely needs to be recalled. The crimes of the Inquisition and the crimes of the Reformation cast so dark a shadow upon the pages of the history of Christendom that they cannot but tell to all the sadly familiar story that Christian morality is not as old as Christian ethics. While there is an historical explanation of the crimes committed by Christendom in the low level of contemporaneous moral standards, there is always a psychological suspicion that in the most active spirits and instruments in persecution we are dealing with degeneration. For that reason it is always to be expected that, where religion rests upon a pathological basis ’ and where the condition of civilisation is not such as to prevent crimes of violence, such crimes will go hand in hand with bigotry. In the case of the Camisards and of the Mormons, we find these facts notoriously to be true. The conditions of civilisation under which the Shakers lived made crimes of violence impossible, at the same time affording ample liberty for sex transgressions. The state of society in general, and the state of society in Utah in particular in the pioneer days of Mormonism, gave ample scope for all the criminal tendencies of the Camisards and the Mormons, respectively. The wars waged by the Camisards were wars waged for existence. But they were none the less characterised by the most brutal and savage reprisals and by unnecessary atrocities. The charges of violence against the Mormons are old and well known. The most familiar is the story of the Mountain Meadows massacre, which is said to have been organised and planned by leaders of the Mormon church. The statement is made that a party of emigrants, making their way to the California gold fields, were decoyed by the Mormons under a promise of protection, and later were attacked and destroyed by a party of Mormons disguised as Indians. Previous to the massacre a Mormon meeting was held.
"The meeting was then addressed by one in authority. He spoke in about this language: ’Brethren, we have been sent here to perform a duty. It is a duty that we owe to God, and to our Church and people. The orders of those in authority are that all emigrants must die. Our leaders speak with inspired tongues, and their orders come from the God of Heaven. We have no right to question what they have commanded us to do; it is our duty to obey. . . . We must kill them all, and our orders are to get them out by treachery. . . .’
"I, therefore, taking all things into consideration, and believing, as I then did, that my superiors were inspired men, who could not go wrong in any matter relating to the church, or the duty of its members, concluded to be obedient to the wishes of those in authority. I took up my cross and prepared to do my duty." 1
After the massacre, McCurdy, who was with Lee, from whose confession we are quoting (Lee was executed subsequently for his participation in the crime):
"went up to Knight’s wagon where the sick and wounded were, and raising his rifle, said: ’O Lord, my God, receive their spirits, it is for thy Kingdom that I do this/ He then shot a man who was lying with his head on another man’s breast: the ball killed both men." 2 When the work of slaughter was ended, "Colonel Dame then blest the brethren and we prepared to go to our homes," 3
Lee informs us that his conscience greatly troubled him about the massacre, and that he went to talk with Brigham Young about the matter:
"I went to see him again in the morning. When I went in, he seemed quite cheerful. He said:
"’I have made this matter a subject of prayer. 7 went right to God with it, and asked him to take the 1 Lee, John D.: "Mormonism Unveiled," etc. St. Louis, Mo., 1891; p. 237,
2 Same: p. 241.
3 Same: p. 249. horrid vision from my sight, if it was a righteous thing that my people had done in killing those people at Mountain Meadows. God answered me, and at once the vision was removed. I have evidence from God that he overruled it all for good and the action was a righteous one and well intended." 1
Mention may also be made of the Mormon organisation known as the Danites, and the multitude of atrocious crimes alleged to have been committed under the direction of the organisation. When we are speaking of crimes of violence committed in the name of religion, we must not forget the crimes of witchcraft. The judicial tortures and the judicial murders committed because of a belief in witchcraft are not to be ignored when we review the history of the crimes to be written over against the account of Christianity. Many a woman whose only crimes were poverty and ugliness and old age was tortured or put to death on charges preferred by a lying or hysteroid boy or girl. Whenever hysteria has ruled religion it has left behind it the horrid trail of crime and sin.
Dishonesty as a characteristic of religious movements and of religious leaders is always the more painful and distressing because of the implicit trust very often reposed in persons who claim to be religious. For those who make the nicer and the fairer ethical distinctions there is something certainly immoral about the relations of the early Shakers to property. Their settlements with persons withdrawing from the society and their indifference to family welfare when the possibility of getting control of a family inheritance was in question, savour very distinctly of sharp practice.
One of the most notorious of the financial undertakings 1 Same: pp. 253-4. of the tongues people was the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, the story of which we have told in connection with our discussion of the history of the Mormons. The financial relation of Joseph Smith, Jr., to Martin Harris is also here to be noted, as are also the frequent charges made against the Mormons of cattle stealing and similar crimes.
Pious frauds and their histories form no little part of the history of the tongues movement. Laying aside the whole question of the Book of Mormon as a piece either of direct fraud or pathological lying, the story of the mummies and the Book of Abraham affords an amazing and interesting commentary upon Mormon ethics. Betty Gray’s blindness and her subsequent restoration to sight belongs to the same class of ethical phenomena. The eagerness of the Shaker leaders to disown the practice of both sexes bathing together and the practice of dancing naked is also to be classified under the same head. The relation of the Shaker movement to the vita sexualis might well be regarded as an unconscious fraud. The fact that their abstract and dogmatic principles denied the sexual life and that their exercises and their forms of worship were fundamentally sexual brings us into the realm of what well may be called psychological fraud. Is nothing to be said about one of the saddest and bitterest of aspects of the tongues movement? The greatest ostensible Lure of the tongues gospel has been the claim of God’s special relation to the tongues people. It is because they have talked holiness and claimed holiness, because they have been much given to Bible reading and Bible quoting, and much given to their own kinds of prayer, that many men and women of uncritical minds have been attracted to them. When holiness is promised and nothing but selfishness, bigotry, and even positive crimes can be found, surely not the least crime committed is the crime against high ideals that have been dragged into the dirt, and glowing hopes that have become the bitterness of broken hearts. The pathos of the Irvingite movement is to be found in Edward Irving. If there is no other crime which we may charge against the tongues people, this crime still stands. A man full of trust, of promise, of love of God and lave of man, caught and carried to his destruction in the "vortex of the supernatural"!
We do not need, either, to be silent as we face the crime against intelligence which is the sine qua non of the tongues movement. Are we forever to listen to ignoramuses, to men and women too lazy to read, to study and to think, proclaiming that the way of salvation is the way of the repudiation of all learning and all knowledge? Are we to turn back the hand of time until it marks again those centuries of darkness when only Fear was God and every man’s hand was against his brother?
There is a more serious duty than that involved in the simple obligation of kindliness toward the uneducated and the unlearned. There is the positive duty of preventing the unlearned and the unintelligent from dragging the darkness and mists in which they have dwelt into the Kingdom of God and hiding in that darkness the light of truth. There is a place for the unlearned man in the Kingdom of God But there is no place for hostility to learning in the Kingdom of God. There is a moral obligation to be intelligent. Let us be well assured that the ignorance of the dark ages shall not again lead Christendom.
Religion is certainly more than a speaking about things holy. Religion is certainly more than a claim to be holy. It is more than punctiliousness and care in the minor moralities and in the details of worship. Religion is the way of life which brings man up to God and brings God down to man. But it is God as He is whom we must bring down to man, the God whose very nature is antagonistic to sin, whose spirit will never linger where sin and crime are rulers. It is God who has spoken and who still can speak through order and beauty and intelligence and the moral law. God may speak through disorder and tumult; God may speak through the darkness of superstition and bigotry. But God speaks most often and most clearly through reason and the ordered paths of nature. The way for men to go who seek the path to God is not the way of fancy or of disorderly thinking, but the way of ordered thought and the way of man’s clearest thinking.
Christendom has waited long and patiently to see whether this thing this gift of tongues is of God. It is of sickness, of poverty, of fatigue, of disease, of crime. It is not of God. THE END