Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle, and the Miraculous Serendipity of Archives

Paul Harvey

Here's a new and intriguing work that's is already making quite a splash: Nancy Schultz, Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle: and the Cure that Shocked Washington City, recently published by Yale University Press. A brief description, from the book's website:

In the spring of 1824 in the young capital city of Washington, D.C., Ann Carbery Mattingly, widowed sister of the city's mayor, was miraculously cured of a ravaging cancer. Just days, or perhaps even hours, from her predicted demise, she arose from her sickbed freed from agonizing pain and able to enjoy an additional thirty-one years of life. The Mattingly miracle purportedly came through the intervention of a charismatic German cleric, Prince Alexander Hohenlohe, who was credited already with hundreds of cures across Europe and Great Britain. Though nearly forgotten today, Mattingly's astonishing healing became a polarizing event. It heralded a rising tide of anti-Catholicism in the United States that would culminate in violence over the next two decades.

Working from sources in Europe and America, Nancy Lusignan Schultz deftly weaves analysis of this significant episode in American social and religious history together with the astonishing personal stories of both Ann Mattingly and the healer Prince Hohenlohe, around whom a cult was arising in Europe. Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle has the dramatic intensity of a novel and brings to light an early episode in the battle between faith and reason in the United States-a battle that continues to inspire debate in American culture to this day.

The author previously published a really fine study Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834, and has made her name as someone who brings to life the social history of antebellum Catholicism, and anti-Catholicism. The new book is akin to Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz's classic The Kingdom of Matthias, in that it takes an unusual, idiosyncratic story and uses it as a lens to explore broad themes of American religious and cultural life in a particular time period. The book has received a really wonderful review by the Washington Post; here's a little snippet:

Nancy Lusignan Schultz, a professor of English at Salem State University, brings an impressive depth of scholarship to this odd, forgotten chapter of America’s early social history. She presents a gripping account of the controversy that erupted over Mattingly’s sudden and inexplicable return to health and explores the lasting debate it provoked “between reason and emotion, between science and religion, and between sectarianism and ecumenism.”

All of these tensions, she explains, were distilled in the person of Prince Hohenlohe, the mysterious “thaumaturgus,” or miracle worker, whose apparent ability to cure blindness and other infirmities had already made him a sensation in Europe. The 18th son of an Austrian crown prince, Hohenlohe drew crowds wherever he went, combining the “benign accessibility of a parish priest with the awe-striking cachet of a thousand-year-old name.” He also attracted powerful enemies. One official denounced him as a “deeply dissipated man, who seduces girls,” and even his staunchest defenders were forced to admit that he made “an unlikely candidate for Catholic sainthood.” As Hohenlohe’s fame spread, Pope Pius VII himself urged moderation, “so that the holiness will not become a subject of curiosity and mockery.”

The Vatican’s fears were amply borne out in America, where the news of Mattingly’s “distance healing” created an immediate stir. The young nation was moved, wrote one cleric, “as Jerusalem formerly was at the arrival of the three wise men.” Perhaps wisely, Schultz does not attempt to answer the divisive question of whether Mattingly’s return to health was a genuine miracle or not. “I believe that something extraordinary did happen in Washington City nearly two centuries ago,” she explains. “How this happened, though, and whether the explanation is natural or supernatural, pushes deep into the realm of faith. This book does not try to guide you there.

Instead, Schultz focuses on the cultural impact of the drama. As the initial enthusiasm gave way to skepticism and concern, she demonstrates, the Mattingly episode exposed tensions within the American church and raised fears that foreign religious figures wished to tamper with the new republic’s hard-won freedoms. The result was a climate of “spectral paranoia” that fueled a wave of anti-Catholic violence, including the burning of an Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Mass., in 1834 — which, perhaps not surprisingly, forms the subject of one of Schultz’s previous books.

The result is a gripping slice of history with fresh, often unsettling resonances for the modern reader. “This miracle has caused a great deal of trouble,” as one beleaguered priest remarked at the time, “happy thing they do not occur often.”

You can also access lot of other reviews and reflections on the book here.

One of the links in the page just mentioned is to a piece by the author in the Chronicle of Higher Education, something that should warm the heart of every historian although written by an English professor! The author reflects on the "serendipity" of the archive, and how that can never be replaced fully by digitized material. In the course of researching Fire and Roses, she stumbled on the inspiration and story for this book. Reflecting on leading her students through the archive at the college where she teaches, she concludes, "My students now understand that most rare archival material . . . will never be scanned and digitized. And even if much of this material is digitized, its virtual presence is no substitute for the tactile and sensory experience of being in an archive." The serendipitous discoveries she made in researching this book on antebellum miracles, she concludes, were themselves small miracles.

freq.uenci.es

a collaborative genealogy of spirituality

Paul Harvey

Here's an amazing and moving introduction for you to Freq.uenci.es: A Collaborative Genealogy of Spirituality: Julie Byrne's "Saint February." It's impossible to excerpt, so just read it. Now.

freq.uenci.es is a project bringing together some of the most creative minds on religious expression today, including some of our friends from Immanent Frame and Killing the Buddha. The experiment kicks off with 100 days of 100 different contributions from scholars, writers, and artists writing about "what they think of when they think of the word spirituality." The index of entries to date is here.

Here's a bit of the lineup and some links for more information.

Frequencies is an experiment. The experiment is simple:
Ask scholars, writers, and artists what they think of when they think of the word spirituality.

Here is the project statement.

Here is the list of terms we supplied.

Explore the results here.

Curators / Executive Editors – Kathryn Lofton and John Lardas Modern

Executive Producers / Senior Editors – Nathan Schneider and Jonathan VanAntwerpen

Here is the invitation we sent.

How Oprah Became a Messiah: Prophet and Profit

Paul Harvey

As Oprah departs, to much media coverage, let us turn once more to our contributor Kathryn Lofton for a summing up of "What is Oprah"?

K. Lofton's book Oprah: Gospel of an Icon, has engendered a lengthy, multi-part, fascinating set of responses from numerous other scholars at Immanent Frame, and on the occasion of Oprah's departure from the network airwaves, Lofton's reflections on her career and meaning in the context of American religious history can be found at CNN Belief Blog, in the Los Angeles Times, in the New York Daily News, and in the Washington Post. Over at Killing the Buddha, Nathan Schneider also provides these links as well as a link to his own interview with Lofton, and gives his own thoughts, here.

Perhaps the easiest place to connect in to all this discussion is at the piece at the CNN Belief Blog, where our valued colleague writes:

As she departs from her ritual slot, there will be a vacuum for some. Yet if history has taught us anything, it is that the void will not be left gaping for long. “The false messiah is as old as the hope for the true Messiah,” wrote Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig. “He is the changing form of this changeless hope.”

Oprah represented humanity’s ceaseless interest in spiritual responses to personal problems. We now live in her world: one of first-person confessions, required makeovers, and spiritual consumption.

The measure of her consequence will be not in whether or not she mattered to you, but whether the world you occupy looks more like hers than you know.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Behind

Randall Stephens

I've been having the students in my Religion and American Culture class summarize news stories related to the course. One brought in a feature on an interesting study--presented at the American Heart Associations Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention 2011 Scientific Sessions in Atlanta. It reveals that young people who go to church regularly are more likely to tip the scales as adults than their non-religious counterparts.

Jeannine Stein of the Los Angeles Times reports:

An inactive lifestyle, watching TV and eating too many fatty foods are all to blame for many Americans being overweight and obese. We may have to add religion to that list. A study finds that young adults who regularly attend religious activities may be more prone to obesity by middle age than their nonreligious peers. . . . "It's possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity," said lead author Matthew Feinstein of Northwestern Medicine, in a news release. "We don't know why frequent religious participation is associated with development of obesity, but the upshot is these findings highlight a group that could benefit from targeted efforts at obesity prevention."

My one question . . . Why?

Is it Religious Belief or Charlatanism?

by John L. Crow

Wednesday evening the ARH graduate students at FSU had its monthly colloquium and during the lively discussion, the issue of fraud and charlatanism came up. In particular, how do we address the beliefs and practices of the historical actors we study? What about claims of healing and medicinal products? When a religious leader sells a product, such as a patent medicine or an herbal remedy, which they claim cures diseases, do we assume they believe in the product, or can we question whether their beliefs are true, raising the possibility of fraud? What if they claim they can heal by the laying on of hands, or from afar? Should we mention this possibility of fraud when there is no direct evidence?

Yesterday afternoon, in a seminar discussing the Sehat and Sullivan volumes Emily Clark blogged about, we discussed the relationship between the courts, religious intolerance, term definition, and the precarious position courts are in when they have to make judgment calls regarding religious belief and practice. While having this discussion, the previous question about charlatanism came to mind and putting these two issues together, I remembered the 1944 Supreme Court case of United States v. Ballard. While this case was not mentioned in Sehat, it would have fit his narrative well, especially in the chapter where he discusses the Supreme Court’s “radical” shift in the 1940s when “the court entered an entirely different world…[b]y acting as a guarantor of rights” (226).

Guy and Edna Ballard, along with their son Donald, were the heads of the “I AM” movement founded in 1930. According to Guy Ballard, while he was hiking on Mt. Shasta in California, he encountered the ascendant master Saint Germain. With roots in Theosophy, Ballard claimed that Beloved Saint Germain, the current master overseeing the Earth, chose Ballard and his family to be the mouth piece for the “I AM” movement. Through the Ballards, the masters, including Jesus, dictated new teachings which would grant immortality to those who accepted the teachings. The masters also claimed their wisdom would save the United States from destruction. Most importantly, because of his special position as the spokesperson of the masters, Ballard had attained a supernatural state of immortality. This enabled him to heal disease and conquer death and old age. He claimed he could do these things for others both in person and from afar if the followers sent the Saint Germain Foundation love offerings via mail. Ballard made these claims in printed literature created by the Saint Germain Press, on radio shows, which had a broad audience, and through correspondence courses.

Ballard unexpectedly died in 1939 causing a crisis within the movement. His death obviously refuted his claims of immortality. A number of his former adherents and students used this opportunity to challenge the movement and complained to the federal government about Ballard’s statements. In 1941, the United States filed a lawsuit against Edna and Donald Ballard, claiming that they were guilty of mail fraud, accepting money for products and services which they knew were fraudulent. Eighteen counts were brought against the Ballards. These claims of the Ballards included:

• That the Ballards had attained a supernatural state of self-immortality, which enabled them to be entirely free from ailments common to man and to conquer disease, death, old age, poverty and misery, and that they could and would transmit that supernatural state to others willing to pay therefor.

• That the Ballards had, by reason of supernatural attainments, the power to heal persons of ailments, diseases and injuries and the power to cure persons of diseases normally classified as curable and of diseases normally classified as incurable, and had in fact cured hundreds of persons.

• That the Ballards had a divine and supernatural ability to bring forth from a supernatural state money, riches and other things necessary to mankind and could transmit that ability to others willing to pay therefor.

At the end of the case, both Edna and Donald Ballard were found guilty of twelve counts of fraud. The significant thing about the case, though, is that the district court judge gave certain instructions to the jury to not consider the religious claims made by the Ballards. The language of the judge is so specific I quote the passage in full:

Now, gentlemen, here is the issue in this case: First, the defendants in this case made certain representations of belief in a divinity and in a supernatural power. Some of the teachings of the defendants, representations, might seem extremely improbable to a great many people. For instance, the appearance of Jesus to dictate some of the works that we have had introduced in evidence or shaking hands with Jesus. To some people that might seem highly improbable. I point that out as one of the many statements. Whether that is true or not is not the concern of this court and is not the concern of the jury. As far as this court sees the issue, it is immaterial what these defendants preached or wrote or taught in their classes. They [the jury] are not going to be permitted to speculate on the actuality of the happening of those incidents. The issue is: Did these defendants honestly and in good faith believe those things? If they did, they should be acquitted. If these defendants did not believe those things, [if] they did not believe that Jesus came down and dictated, or that Saint Germain came down and dictated, did not believe the things that they wrote, the things that they preached, but used the mail for the purpose of getting money, the jury should find them guilty.

When the case was appealed (Ballard et. al. v. United States, 138 F.2d 540, (C.A. 9 1943)), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned the ruling, claiming that the judge should not have excluded the issue of religious belief. The majority wrote, regarding the claims of meeting the masters and the powers of healing, “Whether such representations were false or true was a question which should have been submitted to the jury.” The case was appealed to the Supreme Court which sided with the district court and overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The significant point is that this opinion established the precedent that the United States government is not in the business of deciding which religious claims were true and which were false. The Supreme Court’s majority opinion states:

The Fathers of the Constitution were not unaware of the varied and extreme views of religious sects, of the violence of disagreement among them, and of the lack of any one religious creed on which all men would agree. They fashioned a charter of government which envisaged the widest possible toleration of conflicting views. Man's relation to his God was made no concern of the state. He was granted the right to worship as he pleased and to answer to no man for the verity of his religious views. The religious views espoused by respondents might seem incredible, if not preposterous, to most people. But if those doctrines are subject to trial before a jury charged with finding their truth or falsity,then the same can be done with the religious beliefs of any sect. When the triers of fact undertake that task, they enter a forbidden domain. The First Amendment does not select any one group or any one type of religion for preferred treatment. It puts them all in that position.

With the Supreme Court’s decision, the Ballards were retried. This new case also went to the Supreme Court (Ballard v. United States, 329 U. S. 187 (1946)) and was vacated because in the second trial women were illegally excluded from the jury. The end result was that Edna and Donald Ballard were never convicted of fraud.


In looking at the case of the Ballards, one might wonder how nineteenth century religious figures such as Andrew Jackson Davis would fair. After Davis was visited by Swedenborg and Galen while in a mesmeric trance and given his staff of healing, he then claimed to be a trance medium and that he could heal people. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and Mary Baker Eddy also made claims related to curing disease. Healing is a significant aspect of various Christian movements, including Pentecostalism and Primitive Baptistism, to name just a couple. As scholars of religion, how do we engage the issue of fraud? Is it fraud only when remuneration is involved? Or is it only a problem when the alleged cure fails to work? Many say that as historians of religion we should adopt the stance of the Supreme Court and assert we are not in the business adjudicating any religious claims regarding belief and practice.

The United States v. Ballard set a precedent that, as Winnifred Fallers Sullivan points out, is impossible for the United States courts to follow. In a detailed study of Warner v. Boca Raton (1999), Sullivan shows that the court is routinely placed in the position of deciding what is a religion and thus protected belief and practice under the establishment clause in the Constitution. She notes, “legal protection for ‘religion’ anywhere demands a definition of religion” (151). I think we, as scholars of religion, are more aware than most about the difficulty of defining religion, and all the implicit and explicit baggage that comes with definition. But this, then, brings me back to my first question, how do we address the beliefs and practices of the historical actors we study? Of course there is no one answer and scholars must decide based on the data and claims of the historical actors. But what these books and court cases demonstrate is that our discipline is not alone in the struggle to answer these questions.

Spring Break 1899: Who needs MTV when you have the Battle Creek Sanitarium

Emily Clark

Spring break is upon the Florida State University campus. Many of the undergraduates will embark on journeys of “rest” and “relaxation” to tranquil towns like Panama City Beach. Graduate students like myself will enjoy a quieter Tallahassee and catch up on our reading and grading with a cup of coffee – or when things get real crazy, a refreshing and hoppy pale ale. Taking a break to rejuvenate is not a novel idea. If this were this spring break 1899, I might go cleanse my mind and body at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Founded on the ideas of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (of Kellogg's cereals) became the institute’s lead doctor and head-honcho in 1876. Kellogg was a prolific writer, as a simple Google Books author search demonstrates, and his writings center on health and the relationship between health and religion.

Health reform and improving the physical condition of American bodies was a focus of Kellogg’s, as he strove to remedy “the harmony” of “bodily functions.” Kellogg was especially concerned with digestion, noting how “the miracle of digestion” reflected a well-tuned body. He was a big fan of enemas, and the Sanitarium contained a fecal and urine lab which analyzed the waste products of residents as a means to track holistic improvement. If the body worked at the ideal natural state – as God intended – it would show in digestion. In the words of my graduate colleague Adam Park who has studied Kellogg, “poo had theological significance.” In an aptly named book about the body, The Living Temple, Kellogg laments, “Departing from the way of life marked out for him by his Creator, man has sought out many inventions, the soul- and body-destroying influences of which are clearly evident to the thoughtful observer.” The cure for these physical and spiritual ailments was a new way of living, eating, exercising, and sleeping – all of which one could learn during her or his stay at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. This quest for perfection was not neutral however, for Kellogg was a eugenicist who looked unfavorably upon those not white, middle-class, and Protestant.

Always striving for improvement and eventual perfection, Kellogg’s utopian aspirations remained, even after he strayed from the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Ellen White’s direct tutelage. In addition to the fecal lab, Kellogg developed other scientific methods to examine a person’s body and to monitor her or his progress. A calibrating machine, the Universal DynamoMeter, measured the bodies of incoming residents; due to poor lifestyle, many residents failed to maintain the proper angles and proportions of slimness and posture. The Universal DynamoMeter was merely one of Kellogg’s many life-improving inventions. Another key problem of city living (on top of bad nutrition and lack of exercise) was the poor city air. Kellogg believed in the reviving quality of crisp, cold, Michigan air but recognized the foolishness of sleeping outside in the harsh Michigan winters. Problem solved with attaching sleeping hoods to one’s window to funnel the clean air directly to the top of one’s bed. Exercise was another key element to life at the Sanitarium. Kellogg’s instructions reflected the larger emerging fitness culture, and residents took full advantage of the Sanitarium’s large outdoor gymnasium.

Preaching on the relationship between religion and health was not unique to Kellogg. Around when Kellogg took over Battle Creek Sanitarium, Mary Baker Eddy published her classic Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which explains how disease and pain were really just misguided thinking and a false understanding of matter/spirit. This text remains foundational in the Church of Christ, Scientist. Eddy and Kellogg's focus on the body, health, and spirituality are part of a much larger trend in American religion. R. Marie Griffith's Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity elucidates the centrality of the body - its maintenance and discipline - throughout American religious history. Firm bodies and firm souls, Kellogg was not alone.

But back to my dream spring break of 1899, I would have been in interesting company. The list of visitors to the Battle Creek Sanitarium for body and mind rejuvenating is noteworthy. Mary Todd Lincoln, Warren G. Harding, Henry Ford, Amelia Earhart, Richard Haliburton, and everyone’s favorite Kingdom of Matthias follower Sojourner Truth all spent time at Battle Creek, righting the wrongs American society had done to their bodies.