Heresy Trials

Edward Beecher finds a place in this dictionary of heresy trials even though we have no record of his having been formally charged and brought to trial. A Beecher descendant and biographer, Lyman Beecher Stowe uses the term heretic in connection with three members of the Lyman Beecher family: Edward's father, Lyman Beecher, is labeled "near heretic"; Edward's eldest sister, Catharine Beecher, is labeled "Puritan heretic"; and younger brother Charles has the distinction of being labeled simply "the heretic." Edward, on the other hand, is labeled by Stowe as "the scholar." A careful reading of the data, however, including especially the data about Lyman, Catharine, and Charles, suggests that the scholar is implicated in the "heretical" tendencies of his father and his siblings.

Edward himself was never formally tried for heresy, but his controversial theological explorations were intimately connected to the heresy trials of his father Lyman and his youngest brother, Charles. His own faith journey, as well as the faith journeys of his sisters Catharine and Harriet, also played a significant role in his evolving theological position.

In a dictionary of heresy trials, it would be inappropriate to leave unexamined the obvious question raised by the above data: Why was Lyman Beecher acquitted, Charles Beecher found guilty, and Edward, the "brains of the outfit," never even brought to trial?

Thus it was that Edward Beecher, chief proponent of the "heretical" doctrine of the preexistence of souls, and participant in some controversial antislavery movements, was never brought to trial for the "crimes" that so influenced a younger brother for whom both trial and conviction were a reality. And thus it is that Edward Beecher appears in a dictionary of heresy trials.

Presbyterians might be pleased to be regarded as among the most thoroughly committed guardians of orthodox Christianity, were it not for the fact that they have received the dubious distinction of arranging one of the largest number of heresy trials in American Protestantism in order to achieve that end. For the president of the new seminary to be charged with heresy is indicative of the degree to which Old Order Presbyterians in the West viewed the seriousness of "Taylorite" attempts to modify, if not reject, classic Calvinism. The chief accuser was Joshua Lacy Wilson, venerable minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati and ministerial colleague of Beecher , since the presidency of Lane carried a joint appointment as minister of the Second Presbyterian Church. That Beecher was not a true Presbyterian, Plan of Union or no, and did not accept the Westminster Confession at face value, Wilson was intent on proving.

The conservatives elected Preus to do something about the seminary; the question was what. Preus had a number of alternatives ranging from formal heresy trials to the use of his executive power. Missouri 's constitution charged the president with maintaining the doctrinal orthodoxy of the Synod's institutions. Moreover, Preus believed that the Synod itself was capable of establishing doctrinal statements that would be binding on its employees, providing that those statements did not conflict with Article 11 of the Synod's constitution.

In contrast to other heresy trials in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as those of Crawford Howell Toy, Charles Augustus Briggs, and Borden Parker Bowne, the 1906 trial of Algernon S. Crapsey did not focus on biblical literalism but on faithfulness to the historic creeds of the church. One of only two heresy trials during this period in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, Crapsey's provoked discussion of clerical authority and doctrinal interpretation but by no means resolved them.