Recovering a Heritage

The preceding essay in this series was devoted to the emergence of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America. There the career of Orange Scott was traced to show how his growing concern about slavery and resulting abolitionist activities increasingly put him at odds with Methodist leadership that attempted to crush such disruptive "agitation." The result was a rare phenomenon—a denomination founded in protest against a social evil and the accommodation of the churches to it.

This essay focuses on another early Wesleyan Methodist, Luther Lee. This man left behind several volumes of sermons (The Evangelical Pulpit, 1854-1864) and a number of other sermons published individually in pamphlet form. These materials provide some insight into the preaching of a church body devoted wholeheartedly to reform activity in an era in which the "social gospel" was still considered to be a part of "evangelicalism."

Luther Lee was born November 30, 1800, into an impoverished up-state New York home. At the age of nineteen, Lee reaffirmed the faith of his childhood and, though nearly illiterate, moved toward the Methodist ministry. After several years’ service in frontier circuits and efforts to overcome his lack of education, he rose to a leadership role—largely because of his powers as a revivalist and his ability in debate. (Lee gained quite a reputation for debating Universalist ministers on the question of "universal salvation.") In 1837 Lee became an abolitionist and immediately threw himself into the anti-slavery struggle. "Logical Lee," as he came to be known, was especially in demand to defend ministers in church trials for such offenses as "agitating the slavery question" or "patronizing abolitionist publications." After a period of service as an agent of the Massachusetts Abolition Society and helping to organize the anti-slavery Liberty Party in 1840, Lee joined Orange Scott and others in founding Wesleyan Methodism.

Lee was immediately propelled into the leadership of the new denomination. He presided over three of the first six General Conferences, edited the True Wesleyan, and justified the positions of the church in a number of writings. He also wrote a number of theological works (attacking Unitarianism, defending the immortality of the soul against "conditionalism," and developing a "natural theology") and a major systematic theology. Lee later served the Wesleyans as professor of theology at Adrian College before returning to the Methodist Church after the Civil War. He died in Flint, Michigan, on December 13, 1889.

Lee's perspective on the relationship of preaching to public issues is best understood from a late (ca. 1864) sermon on "The Radicalism of the Gospel." There he argued the basic thesis that "THE GOSPEL IS SO RADICALLY REFORMATORY, THAT TO PREACH IT FULLY AND CLEARLY, IS TO ATTACK AND CONDEMN ALL WRONG, AND TO ASSERT AND DEFEND ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS" (his caps).

Lee defended this position by "denying all neutrality or middle ground." In support he quoted the words of Jesus: "He that is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30). Similarly, the "Gospel asserts its radical reform position, by demanding absolute obedience and submission." Lee opposed this to all decisions based on "expediency" by insisting that "right must be responded to, regardless of wordly considerations."

This perspective also called for correlation of life and message, action and words. Lee argued .that "ministers, Christians, and churches, lose their moral power when they fail to exemplify the whole Gospel." Therefore, "reformers should be reformed," just as "to promote a revival of religion, we must have the elements of a revival in our own breasts."

Lee was certain that "the Gospel will never reform mankind, only so far as it is applied, specifically to the evils to be removed." This would immediately involve entering the political arena. Lee insisted that "a large portion of the evils are connected with civil government, and the Gospel will never remove them, until it is so preached as to have something to do with politics." (On the other hand, Lee also insisted in his Autobiography that "I never had any politics which were not a part of my religion, and I urged men to vote the Liberty ticket as a religious duty.")

With this background we can understand the motivation of Lee's sermons preached in response to some of the great events and movements of his day. Lee himself was "radicalized" by the news of the death of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, an abolitionist editor shot by a mob that wished to silence him by destroying his press (for the fourth time!). This event had an impact on its day something like the assassination of Martin Luther King or the Kent State tragedy in our own. Among the responses it evoked was Edward Beecher's Narrative of Riots at Alton (available in Dutton paperback) that Merton Dillon has called "probably the most eloquent defense of freedom of inquiry ever written in America."

Up until this time Lee had assumed that since the abolitionists were "attacked by the religious press...they must be a set of desperate fanatics." But at the death of Lovejoy he was "stirred, and judged it wrong to remain silent any longer." As Lee put it later, "I preached a sermon on the death of Mr. Lovejoy, in which I condemned all mob violence, vindicated the principles for the utterance of which Mr. Lovejoy had been killed, and condemned slavery as an unmitigated wrong."

This twenty-page sermon dealt with a number of issues that troubled the era. One question that Lee asked was "Suppose the promulgation of Abolition principles does really endanger the slave-holders of the south, where does the fault rest—on the abolitionist, or on the slave-holding system?" A racist and morally impotent society blamed the abolitionist for tearing it apart. The abolitionists insisted on throwing blame back on society and its sins.

A decade later Lee preached another important sermon that revealed how much the issues had changed. This sermon was called forth by the death of the Rev. Charles Turner Torrey in a Baltimore prison where he was serving a sentence for helping slaves to escape from the South. Those like Lee who took an active part in the "Underground Railroad" had to face the fact that such activities were illegal under the federal "fugitive slave laws." In response, the abolitionists developed a doctrine of "civil disobedience" that appealed to the "higher law."

Lee expressed this position in his sermon entitled "The Supremacy of the Divine Law." After urging the right of the slaves to freedom on the basis of the Scriptures and "unalienable rights" (i.e., on the basis of the "Declaration of Independence"), Lee praised Torrey for "placing the law of God and the claims of his Maker above all human law, and the praise or the wrath of men."

Lee also defended Torrey against his more "friendly" detractors. Lee was convinced that "no man can at this day and in this country, rise up and contend for all that is right in politics and religion, and carry out by consistent action the principles for which he contends without being accused of rashness by his opposers, and suspected of indiscretion by his pretended friends."

But the abolitionists were pushed further along this path by the intransigence of the South and the increasingly violent character of the struggle. It was in particular the raid of John Brown at Harper's Ferry that raised new questions. Brown's action was a form of guerilla warfare—he hoped that the slaves of the South would rise up and join him in throwing off the yoke of slavery and oppression.

Luther Lee responded to the ensuing execution of Brown by preaching a sermon entitled "Dying to the Glory of God." Here he appealed to both Biblical example and the precedent of the American Revolution to support the principle that in some cases "it is right to oppose oppression, and defend human liberty...by force and arms."

This position was, in effect, a rationale for a "just revolution" in the face of oppression.

But it was another sermon that more than any other assured Lee of a place in history. Luther Lee preached the ordination sermon for Antoinette Brown, apparently the first women in history to be fully ordained to the Christian ministry.

Feminism arose naturally in the context of abolitionism. Those who managed to break out of cultural conformity to attack one social position could more easily experiment with other forms of nonconformity. Those who had struggled with the theological and hermeneutical issues involved in refuting "Bible defenses of slavery" were better prepared to handle the parallel issues with regard to the role of women in the church and society.

It is not surprising then that the Wesleyans had close connections with important events in history of feminism. Though many of the early Wesleyans had drawn back from endorsing women’s work in the abolitionist movement (ca. 1840), the first Women’s Rights Convention of 1848 was held in a Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls, New York. By the 1860’s women were being ordained in some parts of the church. Lee had gained some notoriety earlier in 1853 by defending the right of Antoinette Brown to serve as a delegate at a World Temperance Convention in New York. (Next to abolitionism Lee’s favorite “reform” was temperance.)

So on September 15, 1853, Luther Lee preached an ordination sermon entitled “Women’s Right to Preach the Gospel.” In it he argued exegetically that there was no valid objection to the ordination of women on biblical grounds. This involved a number of steps (making explicit the major roles of women in the New Testament and the early church, arguing that in the relevant Pauline passages, “the apostle’s injunction was not given as a general rule, but as a remedy for a specific difficulty,” etc.) But the heart of his argument was based on his text (Galatians 3:28—a passage that had been important for Lee’s anti-slavery sentiments as well): “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Donald W. Dayton was a contributing editor to the Post-American and director of the library and assistant professor of theology at North Park Theological Seminary when this article appeared. He grew up in the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

For further readings:

Autobiography of the Rev. Luther Lee (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1882).

Five Sermons and a Tract by Luther Lee, edited with an introduction by Donald W. Dayton (Chicago: Holrad House, 1975), available for $3.00 from Holrad House, 5104 N. Christiana Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60625.

For the rest of the series, see below:

Recovering a Heritage, Part I: Wheaton College and Jonathan Blanchard, by Donald W. Dayton. June-July 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part II: Evangelical Feminism, by Donald W. Dayton and Lucille Sider Dayton. August-September 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part III: The Lane Rebellion and the Founding of Oberlin College, by Donald W. Dayton. October 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part IV: The "Christian Radicalism" of Oberlin College, by Donald W. Dayton. November 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part V: The Rescue Case, by Donald W. Dayton. December 1974.

Recovering a Heritage, Part VI: Orange Scott and the Wesleyan Methodist, by Donald W. Dayton. January 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part VII: The Sermons of Luther Lee, by Donald W. Dayton. February 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part VIII: Theodore Weld, evangelical reformer, by Donald W. Dayton. March 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part IX: The Tappan Brothers: businessmen and reform, by Donald W. Dayton. April 1975.

Recovering a Heritage, Part X: Anointed to Preach the Gospel to the poor, by Donald W. Dayton. May 1975.