It’s tough to level to a extra divided, polarized, or poisonous time in U.S. historical past. It’s a presidential election yr, and the 2 main political events are at one another’s throats. Residents accuse their neighbors of eager to destroy the nation from inside, and even colluding with foreign-born enemies from with out.
Pastors preach partisanship from their pulpits. Some hope to achieve the favor of the following politician in energy. Others hope that perhaps, simply perhaps, this president will make issues proper. There’s an immigration disaster, diplomatic crises throughout the globe, and a deep uncertainty about what’s on the opposite aspect of a sure-to-be-contested election. Will the nation even survive?
The yr was 1800. The presidential candidates had been John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. People’ deepest issues about international coverage revolved round Nice Britain and France.
In 2024 we discover ourselves experiencing a surprisingly related scenario to the individuals dwelling in the USA in 1800. Little question the small print have modified, however for a lot of People—and plenty of Christians particularly—the struggles, temptations, and fears stay unsettlingly related.
In such occasions, historical past will be very instructive. The lives of those that have gone earlier than us supply us a chance to decelerate, assess our scenario, and ask ourselves necessary questions. What ought to I do throughout this election season? Has anybody else been on this scenario earlier than? Did they make errors that I can be taught from as we speak?
Enable me then to introduce you to the Rev. Samuel Miller, whose life presents us a useful information and a pointy warning for participating within the political sphere as we speak. A Presbyterian pastor in 1800, Miller discovered himself within the midst of unprecedented political vitriol and nationwide uncertainty. Not wanting to take a seat idly by, Miller bought concerned.
He corresponded with main political leaders to achieve affect. He threw his weight behind the one political get together he believed represented American advantage, and he put his belief within the chief of that motion. He was completely satisfied that as a Christian and as a Presbyterian pastor, he was doing the proper factor for Christianity and for his nation. And three many years later, he regretted nearly the whole lot he did.
Who was Samuel Miller?
Samuel Miller was born in Delaware on October 31, 1769. His father John was a Presbyterian minister, and from childhood, Samuel set out on the identical path. In 1788, Miller left residence to attend the College of Pennsylvania, the place he earned his diploma the next yr. In 1791, Miller moved to western Pennsylvania to proceed his research with Charles Nisbet, a Presbyterian stalwart and president of Dickinson Faculty.
In 1792 Miller started full-time vocational ministry when he obtained a name from Collegiate Presbyterian Church in Lengthy Island, New York. Alongside two different ministers, Miller would spend the following 20 years ministering in New York, changing into one of the vital widely-known and highly-respected ministers within the Presbyterian Church.
He performed a central position within the growth and growth of American residence missionary societies, which despatched missionaries to white settlers and Indigenous peoples on the frontiers of the brand new nation. He served as moderator of the Common Meeting in 1806.
Miller’s faithfulness and repair amongst Presbyterians led on to his subsequent and closing profession change. In 1813 he was referred to as to serve on the model new Princeton Theological Seminary as professor of ecclesiastical historical past and church authorities. From his put up at Princeton, Miller constructed a fame as a discovered and regular spokesman for Presbyterianism. He printed dozens of works, together with biographies of American pastors, sermons delivered at public gatherings, theological treatises on the foremost problems with the day, and even a public letter on the advantages of cultivating sea kale!
Throughout Miller’s Princeton years, he additionally developed a fame for his public and evolving stance on the issue of slavery. Miller’s views and practices had been complicated, and for the present-day reader, frankly, confounding. He recurrently spoke towards slavery, calling it in an 1823 sermon “unjust, unreasonable, inhuman…altogether unworthy of a Christian and a Republican group.”1
He mentioned this, even whereas he himself enslaved individuals at Princeton Seminary. He referred to as publicly for the gradual manumission of enslaved individuals, but additionally advocated for his or her elimination to Africa by way of colonization. He personally opposed American racialized slavery in his coronary heart, however refused to name it inherently sinful. He would muddle via this ethical quagmire all through his complete life.
A New York Pastor Through the Election of 1800
For our personal political occasions, it’s Miller’s years in New York that supply probably the most related instruction and warning. In each modern letters and in his reflections written many years later, Miller constantly spoke of his want to keep away from preaching partisanship on Sunday morning. He thought-about it his proper to specific his ideas as a citizen, however thought-about his name as a minister “paramount to all different concerns.”2
And but, a lot of Miller’s conduct throughout this era factors to a different aspect of the story. Through the 1790s and the 1800 election season, Miller constantly tried to ingratiate himself to the main state and nationwide politicians of the day.
In 1793, he preached a sermon on the connection between Christian and political liberty and mailed it to President George Washington in Philadelphia. Washington responded politely, and along with his thanks. Miller corresponded with John Jay of Federalist Papers fame who was then governor of New York. They mentioned the political scene, the legacy of George Washington, and the American Revolution. In and round 1800, he would write to and about many different political leaders of the day together with James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Eliphalet Nott, and Aaron Burr.
However above all these political leaders, Samuel Miller pledged his political religion to Thomas Jefferson, the standard-bearer of the Democratic-Republican get together. This get together typically referred to as itself the Republican get together for brief (to not be confused with as we speak’s Republican get together, whose starting wouldn’t come till the 1850s and the rise of Abraham Lincoln).
With a rich enslaving plantation proprietor as its most seen chief, the Republican get together styled itself the get together of the typical farmer. And Miller professed that even when Thomas Jefferson was a faithless deist, he would relatively have a Republican deist as president than an “aristocratic” John Adams from the Federalist get together.3
Miller tried to courtroom the favor of Thomas Jefferson greater than every other politician. He despatched Jefferson sermons and pamphlets, requested him to proclaim days of fasting, and sought his opinion on a e-book he was writing about 18th-century historical past. Miller dismissed the issues of lots of his contemporaries about Jefferson’s insurance policies and “alleged infidelity” to the Christian religion. Whereas he didn’t approve of all of Jefferson’s non secular beliefs or private practices, Miller remained assured that Jefferson was the proper man for the presidency.4
Jefferson voters like Miller felt that they had good cause to place a lot religion of their candidate and political get together. The 1800 election promised to be a important turning level in American historical past. It was the primary time that an incumbent political get together could be elected out of workplace. The stakes had been excessive, and the media actually advised everybody so. The Jefferson-supporting media depicted Adams as a royalist, an aristocrat who would absolutely destroy their younger democratic republic.
Within the newspapers, Adams supporters referred to as Jefferson “the Arch Priest of Atheism” and “a manifest enemy to the faith of Christ.” One pastor claimed that if Jefferson was elected, the federal government would ship individuals to Christian houses to burn their Bibles and switch their wives and daughters to prostitution. (Spoiler alert: Jefferson received the election, and this didn’t occur.)
Via the complete election season of 1800, Miller tried to persuade himself that he was above the fray. “Few issues have given me larger mortification and disgrace,” Miller confessed to a fellow pastor, “than the use which has been and continues to be made of faith within the current electioneering wrestle for President of the USA.”5
Little question Miller genuinely felt this manner about himself. However it was nonetheless true that he additionally participated within the political melee. And due to his place of authority, it’s truthful to say he performed a number one position in it.
Political Regrets
Miller purchased into the partisan rhetoric throughout the 1800 election season and rooted his hopes too deeply in his most popular political get together and presidential candidate. We all know this as a result of three many years later, Miller wrote about regretting all of it.
In and round 1830, Miller expressed remorse for his makes an attempt at political affect.
“I look again on that entire a part of my early historical past with complete disapprobation and deep remorse,” he lamented. “I worry I did an quantity of harm to my ministry, which might in no way have been counterbalanced by my usefulness as a politician.”
His election-season political maneuvering had gained him just about nothing. At finest, it had weakened his ministry; at worst, compromised it.
However this remorse was tame in comparison with what Miller thought-about his gravest mistake: “pleading with a lot zeal the reason for Mr. Jefferson.”6 From his put up in Princeton, Miller seemed again 30 years and realized how the partisan energy recreation had ensnared him and clouded his judgment. He claimed he had believed all alongside that Jefferson was “an infidel,” and a person unworthy of the workplace of the presidency. And but, he had satisfied himself to help Jefferson because the “actually republican, patriotic” candidate, towards the “aristocratic” Federalist John Adams.
Whereas he remained a dedicated Democratic-Republican in 1830, he now deemed Jefferson a “egocentric, insidious, and hollow-hearted” man, and “a hypocritical demagogue.” He concluded with the final word expression of remorse for a preacher, professor, and writer: “I resign and need unsaid and unwritten, the whole lot that I ever mentioned or wrote in his favor.”7
Conclusion
After these years of retrospection, Miller continued instructing at Princeton Theological Seminary for one more 20 years. He retired in 1849 and handed away in January 1850. His life presents us a lot to admire and imitate: a ardour for preaching, a dedication to his household and communities, a honest funding within the missionary unfold of the gospel, and a lifelong dedication to instructing and studying.
However Miller’s story additionally presents us a well timed and pointed warning for our personal politically fraught occasions. The perils of politics are many, and Christians aren’t exempt from their risks. Search political affect, and also you’ll possible fail to seek out it, whereas additionally damaging your calling within the course of.
Make investments your self in political actions and events, and also you would possibly get affect and affiliation with the highly effective. That will probably be your reward. Put your belief in politicians to steer you and your individuals to the promised land, and you’ll nearly actually remorse it. They’ll allow you to down, or you’ll understand later that you simply made an ethical calculation that gave them energy, however value you your integrity.
What is going to it revenue you in case you achieve the Congress or the presidency, however forfeit your ministry or conscience? We regularly solely uncover this with the readability of hindsight. Take a cue from Miller, and think about it as we speak.
Brian Franklin serves as Affiliate Director of the SMU Heart for Presidential Historical past and is a ruling elder at New St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church in Dallas.
1 Samuel Miller, The Lifetime of Samuel Miller, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1869), 87-88.
2 Samuel Miller to Elisha Babcock, 5 February 1803. Princeton College, Firestone Library, Samuel Miller Papers, Field 2, Folder 6, AM 3402.
3 Samuel Miller to Mr. Gemmil, 7 December 1800; in The Lifetime of Samuel Miller, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger, 1869), 131.
4 Miller to Babcock, 1803.
5 Miller to Gemmil, Lifetime of Samuel Miller, 131.
6 Lifetime of Samuel Miller, 132.
7 Lifetime of Samuel Miller, 132.
