Religious Fanaticism
COMMUNAL SOCIETIES IN AMERICA
AN AMS REPRINT SERIES
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
AMS PRESS
NEW YORK
e tel | 3 — ~«(') ed
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
EXTRACTS FROM THE PAPERS
OF dead IN I ee ED ieee
WiTEHYAN INFRODUCTION BY
RAY STRACHEY
CONSISTING
OF AN ACCOUNT
OF THE AUTHOR
THESE PAPERS, AND OF THE TIMES IN WHICH SHE
LIVED ; TOGETHER WITH A DESCRIPTION OF
THE CURIOUS
RELIGIOUS
SECTS AND
COMMUNITIES OF AMERICA DURING
THE EARLY AND MIDDLE YEARS
OF THE
NINETEENTH
CENTURY LONDON Faber & Gwyer Limited 24 'Russell Square W.C.1
46"
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Smith, Hannah Whitall, 1832-1911.
Religious fanaticism.
(Communal societies in America) Reprint of the 1928 ed. published by Faber & Gwyer, London.
Includes index.
1. Sects — United States.
2. Fanaticism.
3. Smith, Hannah Whitall, 1832-1911. I. Title.
BR516.5.S55 1976
280' .0973
72-8252
ISBN 0-404-11005-3
Reprinted from an original copy in the collections of the University of Chicago Library From the edition of 1928, London First AMS edition published in 1976 Manufactured in the United States of America
AMS PRESS INC.
NEW YORK, N.Y.
PREFACE y Grandmother's papers here published, and the documents and books from which my own introduction is drawn, are the sources upon which my novel,
'Shaken by the Wind', was founded.
It was difficult in the novel, and has been still more difficult here to write impartially about the queer beliefs and practices of religious and reforming cranks.
One is tempted to condemn them as wicked, to mock at them as absurd, or to pity them as mad; and they do undoubtedly display symptoms to justify all these comments.
I do not believe, however, that a complete description can be made up of these elements alone.
Psycho-analysis certainly reveals how sex and religion can be intertwined in abnormal sects, and resolves some of their contradictions, and historical research puts them into perspective, and shows that they were not peculiar to one continent or century.
Neither psycho-analysis nor history, however, can explain the impulse which drove the false prophets out into their fantastic and erotic search for truth : and until we understand their motives we cannot fully judge them.
In my Grandmother's generation the motive was thought to be the devil, but I have not made that assumption.
I have tried instead, both in this book and in the novel, to tell the story plainly and without bias, leaving the facts to speak for themselves.
RAY STRACHEY
Cavaliére, 1928.
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INTRODUCTION
BY RAY STRACHEY
AN ACCOUNT
THE AUTHOR
OF THESE PAPERS, AND
OF THE TIMES
IN WHICH
SHE LIVED ; TOGETHER WITH
A DESCRIPTION
OF THE CURIOUS
RELIGIOUS
SECTS AND
COMMUNITIES
OF AMERICA DURING THE EARLY AND
MIDDLE YEARS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER
Gy HANNAH
WHITALL SMITH
page II II.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE STATE OF SOCIETY AND
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN AMERICA AT THE
BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
III.
AN ACCOUNT OF THE FOREIGN
RELIGIOUS
SECTS
IN AMERICA
IN THE EARLY NINE-
TEENTH CENTURY
IV.
MILLER, FINNEY, AND THE TRANSCENDENT-
ALISTS
THE OWEN AND FOURIER MOVEMENTS, AND
THE GREAT YEAR, 1843
VI.
THE SWEDENBORGIAN SPIRITUALISTS
VII.
THE PERFECTIONISTS OF ONEIDA
VIII,
THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE NEW LIFE
IX.
LATER RELIGIOUS EXPERIMENTS ; THE KORE-
SHANS, AND THE HOUSE
OF DAVID
Vii
CONTENTS
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
BY HANNAH
WHITALL SMITH CHAPTER I,
EXPLANATION OF FANATICISM
page
II,
DOCTOR R.'S FANATICISM
III.
MISS S.'§ FANATICISM
IV.
THE
L. FANATICISM
THE BAPTISM OF THE SPIRIT
VI.
JERUSALEM FANATICISM
VII.
THE H. FANATICISM
O18 VIII,
THE L.O. FANATICISM
IX.
MISS X.'S FANATICISM
DIVINE GUIDANCE
XI.
CONCLUSION
(259 / INDEX a Vill
INTRODUCTION
AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR OF THESE PAPERS, AND OF
THE TIMES IN WHICH
SHE LIVED ; TOGETHER
WITH A
DESCRIPTION
OF THE CURIOUS
RELIGIOUS
SECTS AND
COMMUNITIES
OF AMERICA DURING THE EARLY AND
MIDDLE YEARS
OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY.
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ANNAH WHITALL SMITH, the author of the Personal Experiences which follow, was born in Philadelphia in 1832, a birthright member of the Society of Friends.
'The great interest of her life was her search for religious truth, and in the course of this great adventure she wandered into strange places and met with strange men.
Always, from first to last, she looked for good rather than evil, and believed that something of value might be anywhere revealed.
She approached all creeds and all believers in a perfectly simple and straightforward hope that the Lord might be speaking through them, and although her hope was constantly frustrated and her trust continually shaken, she never lost her conviction that the false prophets and the wild cranks of her acquaintance were more mistaken than wicked, more deluded than deliberately deceitful.
It was in consequence of this attitude of mind that sO many strange secrets were confided to her ; and, as she was not only sympathetic, but also exceedingly vigorous, her explorations covered a wide field.
An outline of the facts of her life will give some idea of her standing in the religious world, and, although no description can properly convey the vigorous quality of her nature, something of her attitude of mind will be
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
revealed in her own papers, which are here published for the first time.
Hannah Whitall was brought up amid the restrictions and limitations of the Quakers of the middle of the last century.
She was taught that it was wrong to live as the worldly lived, to dress or speak as they did, or fe mingle with their affairs.
Art and music were ' gay' and sinful, and fiction was a snare of the devil.
Day dreaming and wandering thoughts, whistling and even excessive laughter were temptations, and the true Christian was he who lived always in quietness and recollection.
To Hannah's vehement and exuberant nature this doctrine was hard ; and though she did her best to school herself to it, she was aware that she was not very successful.
'The laugh is in me,' she wrote in her diary, ' and it seems as if it must come out.'
At nineteen Hannah Whitall married Robert Pearsall /Smith, also a Friend ; and with him her search for righteousness was Geis out beyond the boundaries
\of the Quaker fold.
Robert was as earnest as his wife, and as deeply convinced of the importance of the search for God ; and the two of them set off, after their marriage, upon a sort of religious exploration.
First they tried to introduce reforms into the Society to which they belonged; then they joined successively the Methodists, the Plymouth Brethren and the Baptists ; and then they set out as Evangelists themselves, to preach the Higher Life.
Both of them were wonderfully successful preachers ; Robert of the eloquent, emotional sort, and Hannah more practical, more explicit and
PAN AT EW HUDALL:S Mibu simple.
In 1873 they worked in England, and led more than one great revival, and then Robert went on into Germany, where, in spite of the drawback of preaching through an interpreter, he had an enormous success.
This work led to the Conferences gathered by Lord and Lady Mount Temple at Broadlands in 1873 and 1874, which in their turn led to vast undenominational gatherings at Oxford and at Brighton.
People from all over Europe came to take part in the movement, and Robert and Hannah were at the very centre of it all.
The doctrine they were preaching was not sectarian ; they led no exodus from any of the Churches, but taught only the need for the Higher Life and the quickening of the religious impulse.
Trouble and scandal arose, however, and Robert was accused of preaching a secret doctrine, and was discredited among his colleagues.
Hannah stood by him firmly, but the result of it all was that they decided to return home to America, and to leave their work to others.
It was during the period of the Higher Life Movement that Hannah wrote and published her most successful book, 'The Christian's Secret of a Happy
Life'.
This book had not only a phenomenal sale all through her lifetime, but also a vast influence.
It was reissued again and again, and translated not only into all the major languages of the world, but even into obscure dialects of half-civilized tribes.
From every part of the globe there came testimonies to the help and comfort which this book brought, and Hannah's position as a religious teacher was established.
RELIGIOUS' FANATICISM
After the end of their connection with the Higher Life Movement, Robert gave up preaching, but his wife continued, and from then until the end of her life she wrote and taught what she believed might be helpful to Christian seekers.
Letters and visitors flocked in upon her in thousands, and to all who came she gave the best comfort and the best~advice she could, telling people always to trust to the loving kindness of God, and not to be troubled or afraid.
As time went on, however, her interest in practical reforms increased, and she took a very prominent part in the foundation of the Women's Christian Temperance
Movement in the United States, and also in the Women's Suffrage Movement.
She felt that in these ways, as well as by more directly religious work, she was furthering the purposes of God ; and she threw herself into them with delight.
In 1886 the whole family returned to England again, and settled there permanently ; and Hannah took up at once the same sort of public and religious work that she had been doing at home.
She became Honorary Secretary of the British Women's Temperance Union, and continued to write and publish religious books and tracts, and occasionally to preach.
As she grew older, however, she withdrew from so much active work, and contented herself with looking on at the new ways of the rising generation, which she was always inclined to approve.
She was so intensely radical by nature that the mere fact that a thing was new was enough to recommend it to her, and she often rejoiced
DANNAHS WHITAULL SMITH to see the last of the methods and ideas she had herself originated, declaring that what the young people substituted was almost certain to be better.
Her religious views underwent a steady development all through her life ; and she has herself described the progress of them very delightfully in the book she called
" The Unselfishness of God : A Spiritual Autobiography.'
She found that, after all her searching and all her experimenting, she had come back very close to the position of the old Quakers from which she had started, and in her later years she was more mystical, more quietist, and at the same time less positive than in her active days.
'I care very little for anyone's talk on the subject of God, my own or any other,' she said,
"and sometimes I think I shall have to stop preaching because of this.
It seems to me as if it would be enough to say, '' God is" and "Be good"', and then all would be said.
. The will of God has truly become the very passion of my heart. ... For me there is no religious life possible but the mystic life
. the only clue I have is, "the Lord reigneth, let the earth refoicess; While she was living thus, quiet, and untroubled by doubts or difficulties, Hannah looked back on her past life, and on the storms and excitements of the religious search she had pursued.
' All the tempests in the various religious teapots around me do seem so far off, so young, so green, so petty!
I Know I was there once, but it must have been ages ago!'
But it was not so very far behind, 'The seekers and enquirers were following
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
her still, writing and coming daily to get her help and advice, and the problems they brought her were the old problems which she had faced in her earlier life.
She set herself therefore to give what practical help she could, personally and by writing, and it was in the hope that others might learn from her own experience that she wrote her later books.
It was in this same spirit that, between 1890 and 1900 she put together the Fanaticism Papers which are published here.
'You must not publish them until after I am dead,' she told her children, ' nor until all the people I mention are dead.
But then I think they ought to be published.
It won't hurt any of us when we're dead to have it all known, though it would cause a lot of trouble now.
However, we shan't care once we've all got to Heaven.
And I think these things ought to be known, for they are a snare to so many poor, innocent, earnest souls.'
The final impulse to write these things down came to her from the results of her investigations into the case of Laurence Oliphant, which shocked her more than any of the other strange things she had encountered.
She pursued the investigations in no spirit of enmity, and with no wish to do him or his friends an injury, but with the feeling that some time or other a warning against that sort of delusion should be uttered.
The discoveries she made about his teachings are told in these papers, but her first meeting with Laurence
Oliphant is described in a letter written in August, 1886.
'IT went to Dorking—to meet Laurence Oliphant.
He has been living in Palestine for several years, and
HANNAH WHITALL SMITH
actually owns the Plain of Armageddon!
His wife died lately, and he has come over to England on a mission to propagate a sort of mystic spiritualism of a most peculiar kind.
It is set forth in a book he and his wife wrote in partnership called "' Sympneumata."
After dinner Laurence Oliphant read us a long paper about "Ir and He" of which I could make neither head nor tail; but I gathered that "Ir" meant the Sympneumata.
It sounded like pure unadulterated trash ! The next morning, however, he unfolded his ideas to me, and they were about as I tell you. I told him of the dangers I saw in his teachings, and illustrated what I had to say by an account of the fanaticisms to which similar teaching had led a great many good people in America ; but I might as well have talked to the whirlwind.
I am very glad, however, that I know what his teachings really are, as I can warn people more intelligently against them.
It seems very sad to see such a really bright and good man so deluded.'
Hannah Whitall Smith's interest in the ' dear saints' did not cease with the writing of the story of their aberrations.
She followed all their careers, as well as she could, and made a great collection of newspaper cuttings and tracts and pamphlets showing their delusions.
All these she put together in large bundles, marking them on the outside in her beautiful copperplate handwriting, and storing them in a large wooden chest.
Some day, she thought, they might be useful ; some day the warnings they contained might be made manifest.
'Had we been warned', she wrote to one of her af
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
old friends, ' what might we not have been spared!
. . .
I shall leave the story of it all to my children, to do what they like with.'
Hannah Whitall Smith died in 1911, and for some years the wooden box remained unopened, and the Fanaticism Papers untouched.
An attempt was made to secure their publication im 1916, but no publisher was willing to consider them, the subject being, as they said, too unpleasant, and the papers altogether too outspoken.
As time went on, however, the value of plain speaking began to be more widely appreciated, and when the Papers were brought to light again in 1927 no such difficulty remained.
It seemed, however, necessary to add to and supplement them, not only with a short biographical sketch of their author, but also with an account of the state of society in which she lived.
Events have moved so rapidly since the World War, and society has, in so many respects, completely changed, that things which were well understood and taken for granted when the Papers were written are now forgotten and ignored.
'The following account of the sects and religious peculiarities of America in the early and middle part of the nineteenth century is thus prefixed to her story, as showing the background out of which her experiments and her experiences arose ; and in the hope that those who read it through will better understand how so intelligent and honest a woman could approach the subject of religious vagaries, and could meet wild and half crazy religious fanatics with so much faith, charity and hope.