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

Probably in between. It seems clear that Morse DID invent the
telegraph. But otherwise his life was not a model of Christianity. See
my PSCF review of LIGNTNING MAN, a bio of Morse at

www.burgy.50megs.com/morse.htm

I quote from part of my review:

"Kenneth Silverman, a Pulitzer Prize recipient and a masterful story
teller, depicts Morse in all his complexity. The book is a micro
history of the exciting times of the first 75 years of the 19th
century; how a world was changed, not only by the telegraph, but by
other technologies. More than that, it is the very sad story of a man
who truly tried to follow Christ, yet never recognized he had lost his
way. Morse died in 1872, still defending his claims both in the courts
and in the public press, not only a failure, but a man unfulfilled,
who had lived much of his life in acrimonious legal battles. . . .
Morses's harmatia (Aristotle's "fatal flaw) was that he was always
sure he was "right," his biblical interpretations "truth," and in the
adoption of this rigid and unyielding stance, he brought misery not
only on himself but on others. "

Burgy

On 1/28/08, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> I realize this is an old thread, but apropos is an article by Notre Dame law
> prof. Rick Garnett in today's USA Today:
> http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/01/when-catholicis.html
>
> On Dec 18, 2007 2:27 PM, Clarke Morledge <chmorl@wm.edu> wrote:
> > 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
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
> >
>
>

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Received on Tue Jan 29 10:26:39 2008