“INSPIRED BY JOSEPH PRIESTLY”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday, September 20, 2009
All Souls Unitarian Church
Indianapolis, Indiana
For most of western history, few people could see much overlap between the two subjects. Even Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, both serious students of science and serious students of religion, were unable to entertain the idea that they had much if anything in common.
Into that history came our subject today, Joseph Priestley, a British scientist and freethinker, a British clergyman and teacher during the 1700s, whose entire philosophy was grounded in the assumption that science and religion are two sides of the same coin of human life, that there is, in fact, a unity of human experience which is revealed in both disciplines.
It wasn’t until the late twentieth century that scholars began to agree with Priestley. Today, there is a strong wave of study that explores the harmony of science and religion, how they complement each other and are each part of the unified nature of human experience. One of the premiere academic charity foundations today is the Templeton Foundation, headquartered in England. Its mission is to support scholarship that explores life’s meaning through religion or philosophy that is grounded in accepted science. The Foundation’s bookstore carries works it has supported by grants, and carry titles like Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion, or The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion.
Joseph Priestly is mostly known to the world for his discovery of oxygen and as the father of modern chemistry. What is not as broadly known is that this man, who co-founded Unitarianism in England, also devoted his life to showing how a rational religious views are not only consistent with rational science, but also supplement the scientific worldview. Though he knew nothing of particle physics or DNA or evolution, his books could find a welcome home in today’s bookstores alongside others that explain the harmony of science and religion.
There still are religious fundamentalists and scientific fundamentalists. Religious fundamentalists reject any scientific theory that conflicts with their creed. Scientific fundamentalists are those deny any human experience that can’t be literally and empirically measured, such as myth. Today, most thinkers, like Priestley, fall somewhere in between and embrace religious thought to the extent that it does not violate natural laws of science.
Joseph Priestly was born on March 13, 1733 in Birstall, near Leeds, England. His family was not wealthy, but had a comfortable income from his father’s work as a cloth-maker and finisher. Joseph was a sickly child, and his mother died when he was five, so most of his childhood was spent living with various relatives.
But he was also a quite precocious child, especially with languages. In school he learned Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. Outside of the local school, he studied not just French, Italian, and German, but also Syrian, Arabic, and Chaldean (Aramaic). His aunt hired a tutor who introduced him to natural philosophy, higher mathematics, and metaphysics.
But perhaps the part of his childhood that would most shape his future was that he came from a family of devout religious Dissenters.
In 18th century England, the label “religious Dissenter” had very specific meaning. To enjoy full citizen rights in England, one must have been a subscribing member of the official Church of England. Those who rejected the Anglican faith were called Dissenters. Dissenters could not legally hold public office, teach in school, serve in the military, or attend Oxford or Cambridge College – the premier schools of higher education. They were second-class citizens. One law declared that only Anglican clergy could perform weddings, and some clergy refused to do so for Dissenters.
Dissenters took a variety of forms, including Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Quakers, Sabbatarians, Baptists, and eventually Unitarians. Some had no name attached other than just “Dissenter,” which was the case for Priestley’s family. Until he helped found the Unitarian Church in England, Priestley called himself a “Rational Dissenter,” suggesting that religious tenets need to accord with natural law.
Priestley would devote much of his life to the organized campaign for repealing the laws against religious Dissenters. He wrote widely on the issue of the rights of religious minorities, and some of his books, like Essay on First Principles of Government expanded to cover political philosophy in general and democracy in particular. His writings on this subject would later influence political and moral philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. His was among the earliest voices to advocate a complete separation of church and state.
It was in his late childhood years that Priestley struggled to decide his vocation – the career to which he would devote his life. At times he longed to be a scientist of world renown and at other times a religious leader and preacher. Perhaps he would become a teacher, but if he did, would he teach science or history or theology or English or languages in general? Maybe political issues would draw him toward becoming a radical organizer for democracy and civil rights in England. Maybe he’d even become a recognized philosopher – but again would that be philosophy of politics or religion or science or education?
In the end, his life just happened without much careful planning. In the end he would become an accomplished and respected expert in all these fields of endeavor. He would write over 150 works, some books becoming standard texts on many of these subjects, books that would become the major reference for that topic through the next century.
His earliest career choice was the ministry, which his family encouraged. At age 19 he entered the Daventry Academy, a college for Dissenters. I’ll give a brief outline of his various work, without much detail, because I think an outline best communicates a life so diverse, and too much detail can lend confusion. He was called as minister first to a rural church, and later to an urban church, and as a minister he found time enough to create a school for the children of his parish, to build a scientific laboratory for experimentation, and to write books on subjects as diverse as history, cartography, and language
After 10 years as minister, he was invited to become a teacher of language and rhetoric at the Warrington Academy, the local Dissenters’ school. It was at this time that he met and married Mary Wilkinson, who would support and encourage Priestley in all his efforts until her death in America 35 years later. They had a daughter and three sons.
While at the Warrington Academy, he also wrote books on the history of science, the history of Christianity, and just about the history of everything. After seven or eight years he returned to the ministry, accepting a call to the Mill Hill Chapel, one of the oldest and most respected Dissenting churches. By then he had befriended the American visitor Benjamin Franklin. Franklin would later write that he spent some time with Priestley almost every day he was in England. They shared the same passion for science and scientific experimentation. During this time his scientific studies grew more prolific, and he published a book on such topics as the History of Electricity, something dear to the heart of kite-flying Franklin, as well as a book on the philosophy of education.
A few years later, Lord Shelburne, part of the British nobility, and one of the few who had sympathy for dissenters and liberals, hired Priestley as his general assistant and to manage his library and tutor to his children. This gave Priestly even more time for doing the work he really loved. It was during this time that he co-founded the Unitarian Church of England with his friend Theosophilus Lindsay.
These years allowed him the greatest opportunity for writing, and with equal passion he pursued science and religion. It was during this time that he did the work that landed him in history textbooks as the man who discovered oxygen and the father of modern chemistry. He produced a six-volume book under the title: Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air. In terms of religion, he began to focus on history, philosophy, and theology. During this time, he would produce some of his most controversial work. One, for example, carried the title A History of the Corruptions of Christianity, arguing that the most modern churches have all but completely abandoned its original mission.
As Lord Shelburne’s assistant, Priestley was invited to join him on a grand tour of Europe, where he met with noted scientists and philosophers, and became sympathetic to the revolutionary causes in both America and France. After six or seven very productive years with Lord Shelburne, Priestly returned to the ministry in Birmingham. Again he built a scientific laboratory, again he wrote books on disparate subjects, and again he founded a school for children in his parish, and was the teacher of about 150 students.
His years in Birmingham were some of his most enjoyable, but also fateful. He had increased his public voice for repeal of the laws against dissenters. He challenged William Blackstone, the legal scholar of the time, and whose writings continue to guide philosophy of law. Blackstone had written that being a dissenter from the Church of England was actually a crime, and no Dissenter could be loyal to the country. Priestley wrote a reply that was widely circulated, and which pointed out Blackstone’s errors in history, in law, and even in grammar. (Oh yeah, did I mention that Priestley had written a book called The Rudiments of English Grammar, one of the first ever textbooks on the subject? It had been widely known, and certainly Blackstone knew of it.) Blackstone revised his next edition incorporating some, but not all, of Priestley’s objections. He also heeded Priestley’s grammatical advice.
By then Priestley had established a reputation as a founder of the Unitarian Church, a radical dissenter, a leader in the movement to repeal laws against minorities, and a sympathizer to the revolutionaries in America and France.
In July of 1791, he and his family were run out of town by a drunken and violent mob. The riot had been encouraged by local authorities, and the mob burned down Priestley’s church, along with three other dissenting churches, and destroyed and burned his home and library and laboratory. He had nothing left. These became known as “The Priestley Riots.” The King was petitioned to send troops to quell the violence, which he did reluctantly. In doing so, the King also commented, "As the mischief did occur it was impossible not to feel pleased at its having fallen on Priestley rather than another, that he might feel the wickedness of the doctrines of democracy that he was propagating."
Joseph and his family decided to move to America where he befriended Unitarians John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, founded several Unitarian churches in and around Philadelphia, renewed a close friendship with Benjamin Franklin. He retired quietly to a country home in Pennsylvania for the next dozen years before his death in 1804. During this time, he remained in constant contact with these leading minds of America, who universally admired him. I expect Jefferson and Franklin and a host of other American founders would agree with John Adams’ words about Joseph Priestley:
“This great, excellent, and extraordinary man, whom I sincerely loved, esteemed, and respected, was really a Phenomenon: a Comet in the system, like Voltaire.”
Benjamin Rush, another signer of the Declaration of Independence, and who was associated with the founding of the Universalist Church in America, said it this way: “I never met so much knowledge accompanied with such simplicity of manners.”
My point in doing these biographical sermons from time to time is usually to reflect on the thinking as well as the life these people led. In this case, more than almost anyone else, his life was so absolutely full that it leaves little time for deep reflection.
Priestley is most widely known for his scientific work, and of course my interest is primarily about his religious and political ideas. Perhaps, though, I should say a word more about his scientific pursuits. I have a confession to make. Much of what I read was quite technical. My confession is that in over 20 years of formal education, the lowest grade I ever received was in chemistry. And I earned that low grade! I confess that, knowing well that this congregation has a disproportionately high number of chemists, if I had made that confession to the Search Committee many years ago, I might not be speaking to you today.
Be that as it may, Priestley was a pioneer in chemistry and electricity and other fairly practical sciences. When history books identify him as the discoverer of oxygen, there is usually a footnote that explains that two other scientists claim that credit, though history seems to give it to him. He is often called the “father of modern chemistry,” even though he subscribed to a now defunct theory called the “phlogiston theory” and never quite accepted the chemical theories that were eventually adopted. In a eulogy to Priestley given by the scientist George Carver, he described Priestley as "the father of modern chemistry [who] never acknowledged his daughter.” Today the highest award granted by the American Chemical Society is called the “Joseph Priestley Medal.”
Understanding Joseph Priestley’s passion for science is indispensible to understanding his religious ideas, for he was a strong believer that everything which happens follows natural law – that is how God made the world. He had no use for miracle stories or supernatural speculations.
As I tried to say from the beginning, Priestley looked at religion and science through the same lens. Something that is bad science is bad religion. In both realms he had a passion for a vision of unity. Nature is an infinite system, but it is also a rational system, understood by human reason. Religion truths, therefore, must also conform to rational inquiry just as much as scientific truth. The same is true for historical truth. There cannot be different kinds of truth. And for him God, is the very essence of nature itself, and therefore essential to rational inquiry. The God of nature must also be the God of religion.
Promoting rational religion, for Priestley, meant ridding it of the superstitious trappings that it has acquired over the years. The several histories of Christianity that he wrote were designed to explore the roots of true Christianity. In doing so he discovered so many doctrines that were not found in the original Christian church, such as atonement, original sin, and, perhaps most provocatively, the Trinity. His book The Corruptions of Christianity was an early first attempt at exploring the church’s beginnings. That was followed up by the a more directly historical study entitled An History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ. Then the title, as was often the case in those days, continued on with the lengthy description:
“An
History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ, compiled from Original
Writers, proving that the Christian Church was at first Unitarian.
His language could be quite forceful, maybe even defiant. There was a reason he was considered to be a radical thinker in his eqy. You can see from the excerpt I’m about to read concerning the doctrine of Christ’s divinity:
“Upon the very same principles and in the very same manner, by which dead men came to be worshipped by the ancient idolaters, there was introduced into the Christian church, in the first place, the idolatrous worship fo Jesus Christ, then that of the Virgin Mary, and lastly that of innumerable other saints, and of angels also; and this modern Christian idolatry has been attended with all the absurdities and with some, but not all the immoralities, of the ancient heathen idolatry. It has, however, evidently promoted a very great neglect of the duties we owe both God and man.”
In studying religious history, Priestley had discovered the unitarian teachings of the Polish Brethren 200 years before, that went under the name “Socinian,” a title long branded heretical, but proudly used by Priestley before adopting the name “Unitarian.”
Thomas Jefferson was eventually to affirm Priestley’s theology with these decisive words: “I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and the Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them . . . as the basis of my own faith. These writings have never been answered.”
But getting away from theological notions, Priestley inspired ways of thinking that have proven more than merely worthy over time. They have been guides not just for Unitarians, but for all those who value the search for truth.
First, for Joseph Priestley, both science and religion are an organic unity. He did defend a materialistic view of nature – that there is no reality beyond the nature we can experience – but he did not see nature as mechanistic, as some kind of machine that simply follows laws. Nature is organic in the sense that it moves and changes. Different parts of nature are interactive with other parts, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But for Priestley, religion shared the same spirit. Here is a passage in which is unitary view of nature is indistinguishable from his unitary view of religion:
He describes nature as “the connection that all persons, and all things, necessarily have, as parts of an immense, glorious and happy system (and of which we ourselves are a part, however small and inconsiderable), with the great Author of this system, makes us regard every person, and everythng, in a friendly and pleasing light.”
A second legacy of his was the passion for free inquiry, for open exploration in both science and religion. He firmly believed that we should encourage as many ideas as possible to be voiced, and more often than not, the best ones will rise to the top. It was a fierce defense of freedom in religion, in science, and in government. He wrote of this “marketplace of ideas” concept for both science and religion, in, of all places, his science book called “Observations on Air”:
The “rapid process of knowledge will, I doubt not, be the means, under God, of extirpation of all error and prejudice, and of putting an end to all undue and usurped authority in the business of religion, as well as science.”
Elsewhere he wrote:
“Controversy means nothing more than public discussion, without which no question of consequence can be thoroughly and generally understood.” . . . “I profess to be a controversial writer, because I consider fair controversy as a valuable means of discovering and ascertaining the truth.” . . . “It is nothing but error that can finally suffer from discussion. Truth ever seeks the light.”
And a third legacy is his articulate defense of reason, which is the surest way to truth. To honor reason honestly means being willing to put at risk everything we have believed before. His most recent biographer, Steven Johnson, made this summary statement in the concluding pages of his book, The Invention of Air.
“To embrace the sublime vista of reason was, inevitably, to shake off a thousand old conventions and pieties. It forced you to re-write the Bible, and contest the divinity of Jesus Christ; it forced you to throw out all the august, Latinate traditions of the educational establishment; it forced you to invent whole new modes of government. . .“
Much of the world looked at Joseph Priestley as a heretic, just as today much of the world defines “heretic” as “someone who disagrees with me.” In fact, Priestley would know full well from his expertise in language that the word “heretic” derives from the phrase, “I believe.” What is heretical is not what you believe, it is that your beliefs are yours, not adopted from some other authority, such as church creeds. To believe from your own conscience and reason, rather than because you are told what to believe, that is the linguistic and historical meaning of “heretic.”
In a letter to a friend in England, Benjamin Franklin had this interesting comment to make about Priestly and heresy:
"Remember me affectionately . . . to the honest heretic Dr. Priestly. I do not call him honest by way of distinction, for I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they could not venture to their own heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies. Do not, however mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic."
READINGS
I will be talking about Joseph Priestley, an English scientist and Unitarian minister who, after the American Revolution, came here, essentially in exile. What I have to say is mostly about his time in England, and not much about the end of his life here. Since that part of the story is significant, I’m offering two brief readings the underscore his important role in this country. The first from a recent best-selling book about Joseph Priestley called “The Invention of Air” by Steven Johnson.
Priestley became a close friend to three American founders: Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Some of you may know about the famous correspondence between Adams and Jefferson after they retired. During their careers they were political adversaries, but when they retired they began a frequent correspondence back between Boston and Virginia – a correspondence that lasted many years. Those letters have become national treasures because they address deep philosophy between two of the greatest minds that shaped this country. Though political adversaries, both were Unitarian.
It is these letters to which Johnson refers in this brief reading.
“In their legendary thirteen-year final correspondence, reflecting back on their collaborations and their feuds, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams wrote 165 letters to each other. In that corpus, Benjamin Franklin is mentioned by name five times, while George Washington is mentioned three times. Their mutual nemesis Alexander Hamilton warrants only two references. By contrast, (Joseph) Priestley, an Englishman who spent only the last decade of his life in the United States, is mentioned fifty-two times. That statistic alone gives some sense of how important Priestly was to the founders, in part because he would play a defining role in the rift and ultimate reconciliation between Jefferson and Adams, and in part because his distinctive worldview had a profound impact on both men, just as it had on Franklin three decades before.”
This second reading is also quite brief. When Priestley fled England after being threatened by a violent mob, he and his family sailed to America. Americans knew his reputation, and knew he had spoken out sympathetically in defense of the American Revolution. His ship sailed into New York harbor in 1794, and he was met by the following editorial published in the New York newspaper:
"...The name
of Joseph Priestley will be long remembered among all enlightened people; and
there is no doubt that England will one day regret her ungrateful treatment to
this venerable and illustrious man. His persecutions in England have presented
to him the American Republic as a safe and honourable retreat in his declining
years; and his arrival in this City calls upon us to testify our respect and
esteem for a man whose whole life has been devoted to the sacred duty of
diffusing knowledge and happiness among nations..." -N.Y. Newspaper Editorial (1794)