[asa] Samuel F. B. Morse as model or detractor for evangelical faith??

I recently finished reading David Bodanis' _Electric Universe_. Bodanis
gives some biographical information about how Christian faith influenced
some of the early electricity scientists/inventors in the 19th century.

But one of the disturbing accounts he gives is about Samuel F. B. Morse,
the talented painter who patented the telegraph and co-invented the Morse
code. Several strikes are made against Morse:

1. He basically stole Joseph Henry's work on the underlying principles of
the telegraph and patented it for himself.

2. He ran for mayor of New York on a "nativist" platform, the "Know
Nothing" party, protesting against the immigration of non-Protestants to
America. The implication is that not only was he anti-Catholic, he was
also racist and anti-semitic. Furthermore, he had a peculiar conspiracy
theory about how Catholic immigration was a papal/Jesuit plot threatening
to undermine American society, and that he developed the telegraph as a
means to subvert this threat (Morse's book, "Foreign Conspiracy Against
the Liberties of the United States - The Numbers of Brutus").

I also did a little more research on Morse and the Wikipeadia article
suggests that Morse had more Unitarian leanings than his famous,
staunchly-Calvinist preacher father, Jedidiah Morse. Samuel Morse was
also staunchly pro-slavery, but it might be difficult to hold that against
him since there were so many evangelicals during his time who agreed with
him.

In a number of evangelical "providentialist" approaches to American
history, Morse is upheld as an evangelical role model; e.g. Stephen K.
McDowell's _Building Godly Nations_, or on the AIG website:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v13/i1/morse.asp

And even this perhaps surprisingly positive portrait from the Christian
History Glimpses that appear in many church Sunday bulletins:

http://chi.gospelcom.net/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps099.shtml

But the way Bodanis approaches Morse, holding up Morse as a model
Christian is rather ill fitting.

So which description is correct here: Morse the thief and conspiracy
theorist as Bodanis portrays him, or Morse the humble Christian as the
"providentialists" argue --- or perhaps somewhere in between?

Clarke Morledge
College of William and Mary
Information Technology - Network Engineering
Jones Hall (Room 18)
Williamsburg VA 23187

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Received on Tue Dec 18 14:38:43 2007