by Bruce E.R. Thompson.
This essay is about Jonathan Mayhew, a New England preacher with whom few are familiar. He is important nevertheless. His sermons played an important role in fomenting the rebellion out of which the United States was born. Mayhew saw the American Revolution as a holy war: New England Congregationalism vs. the Church of England. Mayhew was, needless to say, a Christian; so, when modern Bible toting Conservatives claim that this country is a “Christian nation,” and try to invoke the Ten Commandments as the moral law upon which our laws were founded, it is often Jonathan Mayhew’s name that they invoke. They should tread lightly. Mayhew was a very different kind of Christian than they imagine.
But, like a stealthy predator, I wish to approach my prey from a distance. I wish to sneak up slowly and ambush my subject before it even knows I have it in my sights. Let us, therefore, begin with what may seem like an unrelated question: Who said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes?” The quote is generally attributed to Mark Twain, but it appears that this is wrong. Here is what we can document. In 1710 Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” In 1821, William Tudor, editor of The North American Review, wrote, “A Lie would travel from Maine to Georgia while Truth was getting on his boots.” He did not claim the quote for himself, but claimed it was spoken by U.S. statesman Fisher Ames. In 1919 it was claimed that Mark Twain said, “A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on.” However, this claim was made after Mark Twain was already dead. A careful review of his writings turns up no such quote. If he spoke it aloud, there is no documentation of the occasion on which he spoke it.
The moral of this story is not just that famous quotes are sometimes attributed to the wrong people. It is, rather, that famous quotes, like most other human wisdom, were never invented by a single person at all. Rather, they evolve. Some version was proposed. That version was improved by another speaker. Yet another speaker gave a different version of the idea, etc. No one person can be considered responsible. If the idea serves a purpose, it is remembered and passed along, usually improving as it goes. That is what Richard Dawkins called a “meme.” (Like any good Dawkinsesque meme, the term has since been misappropriated by others and used for other purposes.)
Here is another example: who said, “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice?” The answer is Barack Obama. But he was misquoting Martin Luther King, who said, “The arc of the Moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Martin Luther King, in turn, was paraphrasing an idea that had come from an earlier source. In 1853, Rev. Theodore Parker, an abolitionist, gave a sermon in which he said, “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.” King was, of course, familiar with the writings of Theodore Parker. As a civil rights leader, Dr. King was familiar with the history of the anti-slavery movement, and with the writings of the leading thinkers behind it.
Theodore Parker held a pulpit in the Unitarian church. An alumnus of Harvard Divinity School, he was clearly familiar with the writings of Jonathan Mayhew. Mayhew was a Congregationalist, but Mayhew was the first Congregationalist minister to openly preach the Unitarian theology that God is a unitary being, not a three-faced multi-god. In Unitarian theology, Jesus is not divine, but merely a wise teacher. In short, Mayhew held heretical views, which he defended with passion and reason.
Mayhew’s arguments gained adherents. This eventually led to a schism between Unitarians and Trinitarians within the Congregationalist denomination. First Church in Boston sided with the Unitarians, so Unitarianism briefly became the established religion of Massachusetts. Is that surprising? The wording of the First Amendment, “Congress shall pass no law…” prohibits an established religion for the United States at the federal level. The First Amendment was not originally interpreted as prohibiting each state from having its own established religion. It was not until 1947, in Everson v. Board of Education, that the Supreme Court extended the religious freedom clause to the states. Hence, in 1830 the established religion of Massachusetts was the religion endorsed by the congregation of Boston’s First Church: Unitarianism. However, pressured by the more conservative denominations, the state withdrew the Unitarians’ privileged status (and the tax support that came with it), thus setting a practical precedent in the United States of observing a separation between Church and State. As I said, Christians who wish to establish Christianity as the official religion of the United States would do well to steer clear of Jonathan Mayhew.
Within the sermons of Jonathan Mayhew, I have not been able to find the words “arc” and “moral universe” as such. But the ideas behind Theodore Parker’s words are clearly present in Mayhew’s sermons. These ideas – that there is such a thing as a “moral universe,” and that it has an “arc,” i.e. that it evolves in a particular direction – are not obvious. Indeed, some modern commentators, notably Chris Hayes of MSNBC, reject them. The critique is this: if we believe that “the universe” will naturally evolve toward justice, then we may think that our own efforts are unnecessary. Why should we labor on behalf of social justice when the universe will move in that direction of its own accord? That’s a fair point. But it is clearly not what Martin Luther King had in mind, and I think Theodore Parker and Jonathan Mayhew would reject the critique as well. The moral universe has a particular arc, but this is because of human efforts, not in spite of them.
Mayhew’s reasoning went like this. In the first place, the world is real. It is what it is, apart from the mere opinions of fallible and imperfect humans.
For, if there be anything existing, (which surely no body [sic] was ever so absurd as to deny) there must necessarily be such a thing as truth; truth, as abstracted from mind or intelligence, being nothing distinct from the real nature and properties of things existing.*
Because “the real nature and properties of things” is independent of mind, it is certainly possible for humans to form false opinions; but, we don’t just have opinions about the world. We interact with the world. And reality is intransigent. If our opinions are false, reality is likely to give us a sharp rap on the shins.
Men are fickle and various and contradictory in their opinions and practices; but truth and moral rectitude are things fixed, stable, and uniform, having their foundation in the nature of things. They will not change their nature out of compliance to the most numerous and powerful body of men in the world. We may conform to them; but they will not condescend to us.
Hence, we are pulled, in the long run, closer to the truth. In a footrace, lies may run with the legs of Achilles while the tortoise is still putting on its running shoes; but, paradoxically, truth will win in the end since the race is long, and the world has given the tortoise an important advantage. Notice, however, that the eventual victory of truth is driven, not by God (or by clever analogies), but by our own concrete interactions with the world. The arc of the Epistemological Universe bends toward truth, but only because active human inquiry bends it that way.
What about the Moral Universe? Mayhew believed that Right and Wrong are just as much facts of the objective universe as Truth and Falsehood are. Indeed,
there is an inseparable connexion betwixt them. If certain things are true in speculation, there must be some correspondent fitness of actions resulting therefrom. And, on the other hand, if any thing [sic] be allowed fit in a practical sense, that fitness or rightness must be founded in certain truths and relations before subsisting.
We might expect Mayhew, as a man of faith, to look to the dogmas of his own religion as the guide to the “fixed, stable, and uniform” principles of “moral rectitude.” But remember that he was teaching heretical doctrines (and he clearly knew how heretical they were!) Mayhew’s view was that the religions of the past were human constructions, full of human errors; and Christianity, in that regard, was little better than the rest. He understood Jesus to be a teacher who was attempting to reform the teachings of the priests and Pharisees of his time. So must we attempt to reform (and improve) the teachings of the religions of our time. Unitarianism historically – and even to this day – eschews dogma in favor of semper reformanda, a process of constant re-examination and improvement.
But, if we cannot look to faith for moral guidance, where do we look instead? Mayhew appeals to the human social instinct. We desire happiness and, as social animals, we instinctively desire the happiness of others. Thereafter, experience must be our guide.
That there is some particular course or method of acting, which tends to promote our happiness upon the whole; and that a contrary conduct tends to our misery, (which by the way are not bare suppositions, but plain facts) a fitness of the former course of action, in opposition to the latter necessarily follows.
Just as active human inquiry bends the Epistemological Universe toward truth, so our active pursuit of happiness for all – in the context of a real world – will tend toward justice. The Moral Universe sneaks up on justice slowly, and ambushes it before justice even knows it is being stalked. But, until the end of history, on the principle that we cannot solve a problem until we acknowledge that we have a problem, the ideal society must be one that recognizes that it may have moral imperfections, and works ceaselessly to find them and overcome them.
*Quotes are from Jonathan Mayhew’s 1748 Sermon I on Luke XII, 54 – 57: “Yea, and why even of your selves [sic] judge ye not what is right?”