The Beechers: A Cautionary Tale For Christian Activists

Which family in American history was the most influential? It depends on whether we mean most influential in industry, politics, or other spheres. But there can be no question that in the history of moral reform, America’s most influential family was the Beecher clan. This was the 19th-century family headed by patriarch Lyman Beecher but best known today for his daughter Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the antislavery classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Lyman and Harriet were just the tip of the crusading Beecher iceberg. Many books have been written on individual Beechers, and a couple have assessed the family as a whole. But Obbie Tyler Todd’s The Beechers: America’s Most Influential Family takes a fresh look at the family, with a scholarly depth and narrative verve that make this the new definitive book on the Beechers.

Todd, a remarkably prolific historian and pastor, argues that earlier scholars tended to overstate the gulf between the Calvinist revivalism of Lyman and the liberalizing views of his children and grandchildren. Instead, Todd proposes we see the Beechers as a reformist whole, whatever the later generations’ dalliances with progressive thought or heterodoxy.

Three Central Convictions

The first of the Beechers’ unifying beliefs concerned optimism about human nature. This might seem like a strange tenet for the ostensibly Calvinist Lyman to hold, but while he always warned about sin’s debilitating effects, he nevertheless embraced the emerging “New School” Presbyterian positivity about a person’s unaided power to choose the good.

Lyman was originally concerned when he observed such non-Calvinist tendencies in the preaching of New York revivalist Charles Finney in the 1820s, but he eventually came to accept and even promote Finneyite beliefs. Lyman was influenced partly by Yale theologian Nathaniel William Taylor, who likewise taught that if God called on all people to repent, they surely were all capable of responding to that call. The Calvinist doctrine of innate moral inability was out; the universal human ability to do good was in.

The second Beecher ideal was the Christian household’s primacy. Todd concludes that “the Beechers’ inclination to embrace moral and social and spiritual causes was but an extension of the kinetic energy and religious fervor that already animated their homes” (27). This domestic focus created a wide sphere of operations for the Beecher women, including Harriet and her educator-activist sister Catharine. Domesticity also enabled a Beecherian tendency to de-emphasize the institutional church, another odd tendency given so many Beecher men were pastors (but perhaps a characteristic tendency in American Christianity?).

The final conviction of Beecherism was that American “republican” virtues such as freedom and public service were perfected in, and virtually synonymous with, Christianity. “Christian republicanism was in fact the family religion,” Todd writes (30). This helps explain why the Beechers could adhere to virtually any denomination or doctrine (including spiritualism, or the belief in communication with the dead) but still manifest the defining tendency of Beecherism: opposing evil and crusading for good.

Room for Doubt

As a historian, Todd seems largely content to describe who the Beechers were and what they did. And it’s a feat to do so in fewer than 300 pages of text (excluding the generous endnotes and bibliography), as the Beechers were nothing if not a multigenerational blizzard of activity. Henry Ward Beecher, the best known and most controversial of the Beechers after the Civil War, easily merits lengthy biographical treatment himself, not only because he became one of the first “megachurch” pastors in American history but also because he fell into the worst pastoral sex scandal of the 1870s after media exposure of an extramarital affair.

The final conviction of Beecherism was that American ‘republican’ virtues such as freedom and public service were perfected in, and virtually synonymous with, Christianity.

At times, however, it can be difficult to remember which Beecher was doing what in the family story. Todd probably couldn not do much to ameliorate that confusion, other than perhaps using first names more often instead of saying “Beecher.”

Overall, Todd seems impressed by the Beechers’ accomplishments and troubled by the family’s confident zeal. He might have said more about his concerns. Perhaps he could have done so in a conclusion, but the book does not have one. (The introduction to the book is admirably clear and full, however.)

Todd’s doubts regarding the Beechers do appear occasionally, such as when he memorably comments, “Beecherism was less of an idea and more of a bravado” (19). As much as we should admire the Beechers’ antislavery views, their moral indignation was turned up to maximum volume on every issue they confronted, whether the enemy was rum or Sabbath-breaking or the ostensible Catholic menace in America. Some of their stances appear heroic; others appear faddish or narrow-minded.

Doctrinal Drift

The Beechers seem to represent a kind of moralistic, religiously themed activism that remains with us today, one especially common in the recent age of “wokeness.” Though the causes and enemies change over time, Beecherism shows that Christian activism can become so central to a person’s faith that we might wonder how “Christian” it really is.

As much as we should admire the Beechers’ antislavery views, their moral indignation was turned up to maximum volume on every issue they confronted.

If a given Christian activist today (on the left or right) stopped going to church and stopped believing in Nicene orthodoxy, would it make any difference in his or her public or social media “profile”? Or is Christianity just a brand and useful posture in the service of the latest campaign against evil?

Having a church- and creed-centered understanding of our Christian identity can mitigate the risks of Beecher-style activism. If Christian authority is based on the church, the Word of God, and the faith “once delivered to the saints,” we can better put our moral activism in perspective.

In this world, the church will always take prophetic stances against cultural sins. As legitimate as those stances may be, when this world passes away, the activist agendas will pass too. May our prophetic stances be outgrowths of our devotion to the Lord and his church, lest our faith become mere window-dressing for our moralistic agendas.