Lewis & Clark and the birth of The Churchman

The privilege of living history all over again is a gift of Ken Burns who created the film on the historic exploratory journey of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. As we were glued to the TV screen to absorb this important Public Broadcasting Service film, we were reminded, over and over, of a parallel exploration the founders of The Churchman at the time of Lewis and Clark - 1804.

This was an historic time of expansion, of thinking of new worlds beyond that of early Americans who, led by President Thomas Jefferson second President of the United States, and to whom the Lewis and Clark pioneers reported daily - literally discovered this now-so-prosperous country. It was a time for making dreams come true, expensive and full of hardships as it was.

As the film was unfolding, I could picture Samuel Seabury, grandson of the first Episcopal bishop in the USA, at the helm of the first editorial office in Hartford, Connecticut, with similar anguish and even questioning if it is all worth while. Seabury's editor's scissors were much in use as were Lewis and Clark's harnesses of the horses and their courageous drivers in the wilds of Montana and California.

The parallel was easy to imagine though dissimilar in danger threats. Seabury's pals were optimistic about a journal that would encompass a new world of ideas. Lewis and Clark were similar dreamers of a new era, made for special Americans who pioneered the coastal scene.

A changed territory, both in the editorial field and in the rugged, new land, was inevitable. The first issues of The Churchman were loyal to the existing Episcopal church, conservative and lacking in social consciousness. Its future was not cultivated; the Western plains and mountains were equally in need of development. The unifying parallel was optimism.

The early Episcopalians were far from socially bold. They adhered to the conservative church and its philosophy. Dr. E. Clowes Chorley, who visited The Churchman offices frequently, searching for editorial fodder, commented succinctly about the climate of the church in those early days. "The new movement," wrote Chorley, "known as the broad church, sponsored by Phillips Brooks and Washburn... catered solely to the socially privileged. It had neither thought nor care for the poor." Editors Guy Emery Shipley and William Austin Smith caught the genuine spirit of Jesus in their differing view. The new editors subscribed to Jefferson's tenet: "the illimitable spirit of the human mind." The new era was under way. The new editors sought to liberalize this Episcopal journal which later caught on to the spirit of the modern world or so they strongly believed - the Social Gospel.

A pleasant association with me personally in the Ken Burns film is hearing my father's square-dance fiddle pieces near the film's beginning. The music is fitting. That square dance music fills out the richness of the Clark and Lewis spirit.

Edna Ruth Johnson was editor of The Human Quest for thirty years before retiring in 1998 in St. Petersburg, FL. As editor emeritus she provides articles and suggestions for helping this venerable magazine live up to its richly deserved reputation.

Copyright The Human Quest Nov/Dec 2002
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