Strong Presbyterian Christian faith of US President Woodrow Wilson and his efforts to create the League of Nations on Christian principles
Recently I read in the book, FDR by Jean Edward Smith, about how intensely US President Woodrow Wilson, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson, worked towards creating the League of Nations, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations, at the end of World War I, how he felt that he was being divinely guided (as per the book author), and how he was blocked from USA entering the League of Nations by the USA Senate as Wilson refused to accept the compromise being offered by Senate leaders. Wilson's health got badly affected perhaps partly due to this intense work that he did and the failure to get it through USA Senate.
The League of Nations seems to be the first major international body meant to resolve disputes without war in the world. It failed to prevent World War II and perhaps USA not joining it was part of the reason why it failed.
What struck me in this reading was how Wilson's intense Christian faith was the source of his intense desire and work for such a peace loving League of Nations.
Did some browsing on Wilson's faith and came across this fascinating document: The Religion of Woodrow Wilson, by Cary T. Grayson dated 3rd Feb. 1924 (Wilson died on the same date), http://presidentwilson.org/items/show/22351.
I have given below an extract from the initial part of the document:
Mr. Wilson was one of the most devout of our Presidents. His religion was marked by constant and regular prayer, not a formality but a sincere outpouring of his spirit and supplication for divine guidance. He read his Bible consistently every day, meditated on what he read, and sought to put into action the teachings of the Scripture. He was an habitual church attendant and an Elder in the Presbyterian Church. Even in Paris he often attended church though the pressure was so great upon him that he was forced to violate his usual rule and work upon Sundays either in his office or in conference. His power of criticism, so keen in literature, political science and practical politics, was, to use one of his favorite words, “adjourned” during a religious service. He would listen attentively to the preacher as one seeking guidance. His Washington pastor, the Reverend Doctor James H. Taylor, in a memorial sermon on President Wilson, said: “He gave the most careful attention to the reading of the Scripture and to the preaching of the sermon. In fact, it was often quite disconcerting to a visiting minister to discover suddenly that the sermon was being listened to with such concentrated attention.”
He went to church to worship, not to exercise his mental ingenuities. He did not muddy the waters of his faith with intellectual analysis. As a young man he espoused the Presbyterian creed of his forefathers, in which he never faltered, from which he never wavered. That firm faith was the foundation of his life and conduct, of his refusal ever to confuse right and wrong. His Scottish ancestors stressed the Old Testament with its uncompromising attitude toward sin and belief in a just God who avenges himself upon those who disobey his Commandments even unto the third and fourth generation.Mr. Wilson was impatient with people who argued that an All Merciful God could not consign his children to eternal punishment. He did not believe in infant damnation, but he did believe that those who had grown to maturity and who had had the opportunity to accept the plan of salvation as laid down by the Bible and had neglected to accept it, and had failed to keep faith with it, would receive no more than justice from the Almighty if they were shut out forever from his presence and his glory. In short, Mr. Wilson was no sentimentalist in religion or anywhere else.One of his ancestors was a leader of the Auld Lichts, the strictly orthodox, as opposed to the New Lichts, the more liberal party within the Scottish free church, and was satirized by Robert Burns, whose loving humanitarianism revolted against the merciless logic of the Older School.Mr. Wilson himself was fond of the Old Testament, and loved to listen to sermons which expounded the characters and traits of Old Testament leaders. In a powerful address which he made in Denver, Colorado, in 1911, while he was Governor of New Jersey, on the subject of “The Bible and Progress”, he said: “What does this Bible do for David? Does it utter eulogies upon him? Does it conceal his faults and magnify his virtues? Does it set him up as a great statesman would be set up in a modern biography? No, the book in which his annals are written strips the mask from David, strips every shred of counterfeit and concealment from him and shows him as indeed, an instrument of God, but a sinful and selfish man, and the verdict of the Bible is that David, like other men, was one day to stand naked before the judgment seat of God and be judged not as a king, but as a man.”
The New Testament also had its stern passages, in the Epistles and in the sayings of our Savior himself, and Mr. Wilson, who accepted the whole Bible, had the strict Presbyterian’s view of the uncompromising way in which both Testaments hold the individual to exacting accountability.But with all this Mr. Wilson thought and felt very tenderly about the mercy of God and the principles of forgiveness as laid down in the Scripture. During the supreme trial of his life, when he was ill and broken in the White House, and all his plans for a League of Nations, which he believed were plans for putting Christianity into practice, were being frustrated in the United States Senate, he once remarked grimly: “The devil is a very busy man.” However, when the Senate reached its final decision and rejected the Treaty, he summoned me to his bed-room one night and said: “Doctor, please get the Bible there and read from Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 8 and 9.” Finding the passage I read: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”
At another time he said: “If I were not a Christian I think I should go mad, but my faith in God holds me to the belief that he is in some way working out his own plans through human perversities and mistakes.”He was averse to abstruse theory both in religion and politics. Near the end of his life he referred impatiently to the “modernists”, who, he said, were “trying to take the mystery out of religion.” Dr. Alderman, in his noble memorial address before Congress on President Wilson, said that Mr. Wilson “was sturdily and mystically Christian”, which sums up a good deal of the spirit of Mr. Wilson’s religion. His mind was too sturdy for the raptures of the cloistered mystic and at the same time too mystic for a purely rationalized and merely ethical Christianity. He believed that what is in the Bible was revealed to the writers, not in verbal form, but through some mysterious illumination, some indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
--- end extract from initial part of document ---
Ravi: Just fascinating to read these views/insights about President Wilson's faith and how that shaped his world views and seems to have shaped his work as President especially on the League of Nations (with impact worldwide).
[I thank presidentwilson.org and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
The League of Nations seems to be the first major international body meant to resolve disputes without war in the world. It failed to prevent World War II and perhaps USA not joining it was part of the reason why it failed.
What struck me in this reading was how Wilson's intense Christian faith was the source of his intense desire and work for such a peace loving League of Nations.
Did some browsing on Wilson's faith and came across this fascinating document: The Religion of Woodrow Wilson, by Cary T. Grayson dated 3rd Feb. 1924 (Wilson died on the same date), http://presidentwilson.org/items/show/22351.
I have given below an extract from the initial part of the document:
Mr. Wilson was one of the most devout of our Presidents. His religion was marked by constant and regular prayer, not a formality but a sincere outpouring of his spirit and supplication for divine guidance. He read his Bible consistently every day, meditated on what he read, and sought to put into action the teachings of the Scripture. He was an habitual church attendant and an Elder in the Presbyterian Church. Even in Paris he often attended church though the pressure was so great upon him that he was forced to violate his usual rule and work upon Sundays either in his office or in conference. His power of criticism, so keen in literature, political science and practical politics, was, to use one of his favorite words, “adjourned” during a religious service. He would listen attentively to the preacher as one seeking guidance. His Washington pastor, the Reverend Doctor James H. Taylor, in a memorial sermon on President Wilson, said: “He gave the most careful attention to the reading of the Scripture and to the preaching of the sermon. In fact, it was often quite disconcerting to a visiting minister to discover suddenly that the sermon was being listened to with such concentrated attention.”
He went to church to worship, not to exercise his mental ingenuities. He did not muddy the waters of his faith with intellectual analysis. As a young man he espoused the Presbyterian creed of his forefathers, in which he never faltered, from which he never wavered. That firm faith was the foundation of his life and conduct, of his refusal ever to confuse right and wrong. His Scottish ancestors stressed the Old Testament with its uncompromising attitude toward sin and belief in a just God who avenges himself upon those who disobey his Commandments even unto the third and fourth generation.Mr. Wilson was impatient with people who argued that an All Merciful God could not consign his children to eternal punishment. He did not believe in infant damnation, but he did believe that those who had grown to maturity and who had had the opportunity to accept the plan of salvation as laid down by the Bible and had neglected to accept it, and had failed to keep faith with it, would receive no more than justice from the Almighty if they were shut out forever from his presence and his glory. In short, Mr. Wilson was no sentimentalist in religion or anywhere else.One of his ancestors was a leader of the Auld Lichts, the strictly orthodox, as opposed to the New Lichts, the more liberal party within the Scottish free church, and was satirized by Robert Burns, whose loving humanitarianism revolted against the merciless logic of the Older School.Mr. Wilson himself was fond of the Old Testament, and loved to listen to sermons which expounded the characters and traits of Old Testament leaders. In a powerful address which he made in Denver, Colorado, in 1911, while he was Governor of New Jersey, on the subject of “The Bible and Progress”, he said: “What does this Bible do for David? Does it utter eulogies upon him? Does it conceal his faults and magnify his virtues? Does it set him up as a great statesman would be set up in a modern biography? No, the book in which his annals are written strips the mask from David, strips every shred of counterfeit and concealment from him and shows him as indeed, an instrument of God, but a sinful and selfish man, and the verdict of the Bible is that David, like other men, was one day to stand naked before the judgment seat of God and be judged not as a king, but as a man.”
The New Testament also had its stern passages, in the Epistles and in the sayings of our Savior himself, and Mr. Wilson, who accepted the whole Bible, had the strict Presbyterian’s view of the uncompromising way in which both Testaments hold the individual to exacting accountability.But with all this Mr. Wilson thought and felt very tenderly about the mercy of God and the principles of forgiveness as laid down in the Scripture. During the supreme trial of his life, when he was ill and broken in the White House, and all his plans for a League of Nations, which he believed were plans for putting Christianity into practice, were being frustrated in the United States Senate, he once remarked grimly: “The devil is a very busy man.” However, when the Senate reached its final decision and rejected the Treaty, he summoned me to his bed-room one night and said: “Doctor, please get the Bible there and read from Second Corinthians, chapter 4, verses 8 and 9.” Finding the passage I read: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”
At another time he said: “If I were not a Christian I think I should go mad, but my faith in God holds me to the belief that he is in some way working out his own plans through human perversities and mistakes.”He was averse to abstruse theory both in religion and politics. Near the end of his life he referred impatiently to the “modernists”, who, he said, were “trying to take the mystery out of religion.” Dr. Alderman, in his noble memorial address before Congress on President Wilson, said that Mr. Wilson “was sturdily and mystically Christian”, which sums up a good deal of the spirit of Mr. Wilson’s religion. His mind was too sturdy for the raptures of the cloistered mystic and at the same time too mystic for a purely rationalized and merely ethical Christianity. He believed that what is in the Bible was revealed to the writers, not in verbal form, but through some mysterious illumination, some indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
--- end extract from initial part of document ---
Ravi: Just fascinating to read these views/insights about President Wilson's faith and how that shaped his world views and seems to have shaped his work as President especially on the League of Nations (with impact worldwide).
[I thank presidentwilson.org and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s) from their website on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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