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Monogamatic Marriage
John Alexander Dowie
John Alexander Dowie (1847–1907). Born on May 25, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to John Murray Dowie, a tailor and lay preacher, and Ann Macfarlan, John Alexander Dowie became a controversial evangelist and faith healer who founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and Zion, Illinois. His childhood was marked by poverty and illness, but he showed early piety, reading the Bible cover-to-cover by age six and converting at seven after hearing a street preacher. In 1860, his family migrated to Adelaide, Australia, where Dowie worked in his uncle’s shoe business and later as a clerk, rising to a firm handling $2 million annually. At 21, he returned to Edinburgh to study theology, ordained as a Congregational minister in 1872, pastoring at Alma, Australia. His outspoken style led to conflicts, prompting resignations from churches in Manly (1873) and Newtown (1875). By 1878, he left Congregationalism, embracing divine healing after witnessing recoveries during a plague, founding the International Divine Healing Association in 1886. Moving to the U.S. in 1888, he built a following in San Francisco before settling in Chicago in 1890, capitalizing on the 1893 World’s Fair to grow his ministry. In 1896, he established the Christian Catholic Church, emphasizing healing, and in 1901, founded Zion, a theocratic community banning alcohol, tobacco, and medicine. Proclaiming himself “Elijah the Restorer” in 1901, he ruled Zion autocratically, amassing wealth but facing legal battles, including fraud suits he overcame. His books, like Zion’s Conflict with Methodist Apostasy (1900), and Leaves of Healing magazine spread his teachings. Married to cousin Jane Dowie in 1876, he had three children—Gladstone, Jeanie (died 1885), and Esther (died 1902). Extravagant campaigns, like a failed 1903 New York crusade, and financial mismanagement led to his 1906 deposition by deputy Wilbur Voliva after a stroke. Dowie died on March 9, 1907, in Zion, saying, “The time has come when I must obey God rather than man.”
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In this sermon, the preacher strongly condemns the social system that pretends to be monogamous but is actually filled with mischief. He emphasizes the importance of fathers taking responsibility for their children and criticizes those who hunt for slaves and deceive women, showing no care for their offspring. The preacher calls for a change in society, urging people to turn their hearts towards these poor, wandering children. He advocates for monogamous marriage as God's original plan and calls for the enforcement of laws against polygamy and immorality.
Sermon Transcription
They who in Chicago and elsewhere smear at the polygamists have their streets filled with armor, and the jails filled with their criminal offsprings. May God help me to smite these things. Help me, O God, to tear from the faces of these hypocritical wretches who want to destroy Zion, the mass which hides them and show them in their true nakedness to the community. Dear doctor, the wretches, many of Zion's persecutors are thieves in strife, smaller like twine in the very depths of immorality. To the shame of men, there are thousands upon thousands of immoral women in this city. If we are to have the restoration of all things, we must go back to monogamic marriage. We must punish polygamy. We must punish tenfold more the man or woman who lives in solitary and fornication. Let the people say, Amen. Audience, Amen. The iron hand of law, God's scepter, will smash this accursed social system that pretends to be monogamistic when it is simply promiscuous. Animals will take care of their offspring, but those who hunt for flesh, destroying and deceiving women, care nothing for their bastard offspring, who become a curse and a menace to society, to the church, and to the kingdom of God. I go to the foundation, and I want to turn the hearts of the children to their fathers. If I could find the fathers of many of the poor waifs of our city, I doubtless would find them in high social and even in ecclesiastical positions. Oh, that you might feel, my brother, what a crime it has been for you to bring into the world a being who is left to chance, charity, and to Christ. No father, perhaps, no mother owning him. In the moment of your base passion, you forgot your God and the fundamental law of human existence and human society. Oh, that God would turn your heart to these poor wandering children, and that you would sin no more. I stand here, and here I will stand for monogamic marriage as God originally ordained it. I shall pour the fire of the thunderbolts of God into this rotten system of society, until the law is enforced, until the poor harmless is taken from this street, and the harmless abuser finds his place in a prison.
Monogamatic Marriage
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John Alexander Dowie (1847–1907). Born on May 25, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to John Murray Dowie, a tailor and lay preacher, and Ann Macfarlan, John Alexander Dowie became a controversial evangelist and faith healer who founded the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and Zion, Illinois. His childhood was marked by poverty and illness, but he showed early piety, reading the Bible cover-to-cover by age six and converting at seven after hearing a street preacher. In 1860, his family migrated to Adelaide, Australia, where Dowie worked in his uncle’s shoe business and later as a clerk, rising to a firm handling $2 million annually. At 21, he returned to Edinburgh to study theology, ordained as a Congregational minister in 1872, pastoring at Alma, Australia. His outspoken style led to conflicts, prompting resignations from churches in Manly (1873) and Newtown (1875). By 1878, he left Congregationalism, embracing divine healing after witnessing recoveries during a plague, founding the International Divine Healing Association in 1886. Moving to the U.S. in 1888, he built a following in San Francisco before settling in Chicago in 1890, capitalizing on the 1893 World’s Fair to grow his ministry. In 1896, he established the Christian Catholic Church, emphasizing healing, and in 1901, founded Zion, a theocratic community banning alcohol, tobacco, and medicine. Proclaiming himself “Elijah the Restorer” in 1901, he ruled Zion autocratically, amassing wealth but facing legal battles, including fraud suits he overcame. His books, like Zion’s Conflict with Methodist Apostasy (1900), and Leaves of Healing magazine spread his teachings. Married to cousin Jane Dowie in 1876, he had three children—Gladstone, Jeanie (died 1885), and Esther (died 1902). Extravagant campaigns, like a failed 1903 New York crusade, and financial mismanagement led to his 1906 deposition by deputy Wilbur Voliva after a stroke. Dowie died on March 9, 1907, in Zion, saying, “The time has come when I must obey God rather than man.”