Lessons from a Megalomaniac

Lessons From A Megalomaniac

Fair, Clear and Terrible: The Story of Shiloh, by Shirley Nelson (British American Publishing, 447 pp.; $21.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Luci Shaw, writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and author of God in the Dark.

What is it that turns a vigorous religious movement in on itself—reversing the flow of energy from an outgoing vision for mission to the centripetal pull of decay and self-destruction? Shirley Nelson, author of The Last Year of the War (Harold Shaw), has provided us with a compelling case history in the rise and fall of the Shiloh movement, begun in Durham, Maine, in the 1890s.

Its leader, Frank Sandford, had all the qualities to get such a movement going—he was handsome, intelligent, bold, magnetic, a powerful presence with an almost electrical spiritual intensity. He was also headstrong, volatile, and fanatical, and eventually became convinced that he alone was the mouthpiece of God.

Maine’S Elijah

In the beginning, the call of God in Sandford seemed authentic enough. He was able to gather around him followers who were hungry for spiritual renewal and eager to claim the world for God. With their diligent help he soon erected a remarkable hilltop training school whose symbolic configuration (the tower of the main building was topped with a golden crown visible for miles) was echoed in the biblical nomenclature attached to Shiloh’s buildings, people, and tasks: David’s Tower, Bethesda, the Twelve Tribes, Olivet, the Nineveh Fast, the Feast of Tabernacles, Hephzibah, the White Horse—names that had either an Old Testament or an apocalyptic ring.

Sandford felt himself to be a modern prophet-leader, calling himself “David” and “Elijah.” The usual catalyst for decision or movement came through words of command “received” or heard by Sandford or his lieutenants in prophetic manner—words such as “Go straight,” “Give up,” “Continue,” “Turn,” “The conquest of America afresh!” “Go around [the world]!”

Sandford and his inner circle seemed to thrive on crisis. Shiloh’s history was characterized not only by enthusiasm but also by epidemics of illness, lack of fuel in the severe New England winters, food shortages, harassment by unsympathetic townspeople, purges among the faithful, broken families, personality conflicts, sudden reversals of policy. All were seen as challenges of faith and opportunities for deeper commitment. Even when poverty was at its deepest, Sandford specialized in raising money for his special projects—new buildings, ships, a chariot with horses. Prayer meetings, often of many hours’ or days’ duration, were held: sins were confessed, faith was expressed, and empty pockets were emptied more thoroughly; and miraculously, the money came in.

One of his most singular efforts was the purchase of a sloop, the Coronet, with which to evangelize the world—not literally (though outposts were established in England, Egypt, and Jerusalem), but symbolically, by sailing in sight of continents or islands and “claiming” them for Christ. For years the Coronet and the high seas became Frank Sandford’s refuge. He dared not land again in North America where charges of manslaughter and neglect awaited him, and the tribulations he and the crew underwent—their sails often ripped and hull leaking, food supplies exhausted or rotting, and sickness, despair, and mutiny rampant—make for extraordinary reading.

Though Sandford was eventually indicted and imprisoned in an Atlanta penitentiary for several years, the deepest tragedies were enacted in the lives of his followers. Often they were brainwashed into an irrational devotion and loyalty that made any criticism of the movement seem like unfaithfulness to God himself. Their way of life consisted of cycles in which miraculous provision and prosperity and spiritual exhilaration alternated with destitution—hunger, cold, illness, all exacerbated by exhausting physical labor. These times of privation were seen not as predictable consequences of Sandford’s unsubstantiated visions and idiosyncratic enterprises, but as the result of disobedience, willfulness, or compromise on the part of his followers.

In 1919, after continued legal complications and financial shortfalls, Sandford received the directive “Remove!” and left for Boston with his family. Eventually the movement, dwindling in size by disillusionment and defection, went underground. Frank Sandford moved to a secret destination known only to a few close followers. He died in 1948.

A Timely Warning

Though her own parents had been involved in the Shiloh movement (her own childhood memories are part of the book’s fabric), Shirley Nelson tells the story candidly, with a fairness and compassion that adds to its impact. Her reliance on primary sources—journals, letters, newspaper reports, court records—gives the work a compelling authenticity. Combining the zeal of the historian with the transcendent eye of the novelist, Nelson lends every telling detail the hard edge of reality, and makes Fair, Clear and Terrible one of the most engrossing slices of history to be released in the past decade.

This story is a warning, no doubt about it. Christian readers will find it sobering and salutary. It should provoke in all of us the question, in the wake of more recent leadership scandals, “How can we prevent this horror from happening again?”

A British Panorama

Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, by D. W. Bebbington (Unwin Hyman, 364 pp.; $44.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Grant Wacker, associate professor of religious studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

By any reasonable measure of such things, evangelical Protestantism ranks as one of the most important forces of modern British history. Evangelicals permanently altered the course of the Established Church in the eighteenth century, set the tone of British culture in the midnineteenth century, claimed the allegiance of both archbishops of Canterbury in the 1970s, and through their well-oiled missionary agencies molded the shape of Christianity throughout much of the non-Western world.

Not surprisingly, numerous books have been written on one or another aspects of that notable tradition. But till now no one has tried to tell the whole story at once. Bebbington, a 40-year-old Baptist history professor at the University of Stirling, and already the author of three other substantial works, is the first to survey the evangelical panorama in Britain from beginning to end—and all around as well.

Radically Modern

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. It bends under the weight of its footnotes as it marches from century to century across rolling fields of social and cultural history. Even so, this is not a general textbook with neatly parsed chapters on one of everything. Rather, it is a closely reasoned monograph governed by a single argument. That argument, briefly stated, is that evangelicalism is, despite its self-perception, a radically modern form of Christianity.

On the face of it, that claim seems tame enough. But the implications are far-reaching—especially if one believes, as many evangelicals do, that the apostle Paul was just Billy Graham with a Greek accent. The crucial point here is that evangelicalism was born in Britain and in British North America in the 1730s not as a reaction against the enlightened currents of the age, as many have supposed, but as a religious expression of those very currents.

Evangelicalism’s fondness for rational argument and pragmatic method, its optimism about the providential course of history, its concern for religious toleration and humanitarian reform, its aptitude for precise expression and effective communication betokened a religious movement as indebted to Newton and Locke as any Latitudinarian Anglican.

Deep cultural indebtedness continued to hold true for later years as well. In the nineteenth century, the heightened supernaturalism and fideistic intuitionalism that animated Wordsworth and Emerson also fired the preaching of Edward Irving and Charles Spurgeon. Secular romanticism bubbled over into faith healing, proto-Zionism, apocalyptic eschatology, and ear-splitting shouting matches over biblical inerrancy.

And no one should be surprised that the late twentieth century, with its fondness for “nonrepresentational art, stream-of-consciousness literature and … the nonrational in all its forms,” was also the era of the charismatic insurgence, with its affinity for doctrinal fuzziness and ecstatic piety. All together, it would be difficult to find a barometer in any age that was more consistently sensitive to the culture in which it lived.

Evangelicalism’s essential modernity showed up in other ways, too. Bebbington demonstrates that the tradition did not tumble from the sky as a sacred meteorite. Rather, it exhibited an almost predictable sociological profile. Over the centuries evangelicalism most readily took root among artisans, skilled laborers, and up-and-coming merchants—not among the destitute nor among the gentry. Its message proved most attractive in towns and in thriving cities rather than in isolated rural areas or in densely packed urban settings. Women were numerically dominant, yet evangelicalism remained virtually synonymous with patriarchy. Evangelicalism fought for such landmark reforms as the abolition of slavery and the opium trade, yet it deemed those practices evil because they fostered private vices rather than because they were unjust or inhumane.

A “Quadrilateral Of Priorities”

Bebbington recognizes, of course, that there were significant continuities within the evangelical tradition, too, enduring hallmarks that defined and made it what it was. He locates those continuities in what he calls a “quadrilateral of priorities”: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism. None of those emphases was wholly new but, taken together, they composed a profile unique within Christian history. Even so, the way that each priority functioned wobbled from one generation to the next.

On these counts and many others, Bebbington’s work squares with the findings of historians of North American evangelicalism. The tradition often resembled a vast lava flow, rolling over national boundaries and cementing new communities of information exchange. But in many respects, Britain really was an ocean away. Perhaps the most striking difference between the North American and the British stories was the absence in the latter of a sustained fundamentalist controversy or of a viable fundamentalist faction. The Brits had their fair share of bare-knuckled battlers, to be sure, but there was no Scopes Trial and no Jerry Falwell.

In a study so broadly conceived and so boldly argued, it would be something of a miracle if thoughtful readers walked away nodding agreement on all points. One might fault Bebbington for making little effort to hide his likes and dislikes. Reformed Nonconformity receives, as they say, privileged treatment throughout, while the Keswick tradition, which undergirds the current Pentecostal/charismatic and Third World missions explosion, takes some needless slaps.

Without doubt, Bebbington’s argument for the perennial impact of secular culture on evangelical sensibilities assuredly challenges readers who are prone to think of evangelicalism as a timeless molecule, quietly floating above the vicissitudes of history. But Bebbington’s interpretation harbors problems of its own. Over the centuries evangelicals insistently denied some of the most fundamental assumptions of secular voices, even as they rushed to appropriate other assumptions and to express themselves in the idioms of the day.

Above all, it is worth noting how persistently evangelicals returned to the Bible itself for anchorage and direction and spiritual sustenance. They were men and women of their times, to be sure. Bebbington leaves little doubt that evangelicals ended up reading the Scripture not only through the lenses of their age but also often enough through the lenses of their self-interest. Yet for all their bias and priggishness and plain human cussedness, evangelicals remain remarkable for their determination to sail history’s uncharted seas by the aid of that one familiar star.

A Merciful Killing?

Euthanasia: Spiritual, Medical and Legal Issues in Terminal Health Care, by Beth Spring and Ed Larson (Multnomah, 219 pp.; $12.95, paper). Reviewed by Charles Edward White, Spring Arbor College, Spring Arbor, Michigan.

In Euthanasia we are introduced to five candidates for euthanasia. All five lives could be sustained only by machines. One woman took poison to avoid a lingering death. One man pulled the plug, and then, much to his surprise, recovered. Another went home and died, and the fourth died in the hospital. The fifth was unconscious and breathed only with a respirator for more than a year, until the morning he awoke and asked for his mother. Within months, he recovered fully.

These stories remind us that the euthanasia debate is not just an academic discussion. Beth Spring, a journalist, and Ed Larson, who teaches history and law at the University of Georgia, say our society faces a crisis in terminal health care. This crisis is caused by four trends: the increasingly technical and impersonal practice of medicine, the aging of the baby boomers, the growing ability to postpone death, and the rising cost of medical care. If these trends continue, caring for the elderly will consume 45 cents of every health-care dollar. To avert this crisis, the proponents of euthanasia are vigorously offering their solution.

Speaking to an aging population fearful of intrusive tubes and of burdening their children, some are promoting “death with dignity” through suicide and the duty of the terminally ill “to die and get out of the way.” These once-extreme views are now debated in our courts and legislatures.

Spring and Larson reject euthanasia for several reasons. First, they say it attacks the sovereignty of God; God is the only one who has the authority to give or take life. Second, euthanasia neglects God’s power to heal. Third, it forgets that death is an enemy and not originally part of God’s plan for the human race. Fourth, euthanasia discounts the value of suffering. Finally, euthanasia is wrong because it cuts dying people off from the communities God has ordained to serve them. The church is God’s vehicle to minister to the dying, and euthanasia spurns that ministry.

Besides simply resisting the growing euthanasia movement, Spring and Larson recommend that Christians promote “hospice” as an alternative both to “mercy killing” and to technologically prolonged death. The prospect of dying with dignity in a loving environment will remove much of the appeal of euthanasia. In addition to advocating hospice, Spring and Larson offer guidance in preparing for the medical problems of old age.

Euthanasia is clear and accurate. It alerts evangelicals to the next major battle in the prolife movement. Just as many in the church were not prepared for the ferocity of the assault of the abortionists 20 years ago, so now most are unaware of the plans of the “mercy-killers.” In such a short, readable book the authors could never answer all the questions, but their work is a blast on the trumpet signaling the enemy’s approach to an unguarded flank.

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