Texas by James A. Michener
With the battle lines thus firmly drawn—Rusk and Quimper versus Cobb and Garza—the members looked to me, and I could not escape revealing my opinion: ‘I side with the popular opinion in Texas. I believe the invasion of Grenada was justified. I think it forestalled Cuban action. And I’m sure it’s reelected Ronald Reagan.’
Miss Cobb was disappointed with me: ‘Do you know how big Grenada is? Smaller than the tiniest Texas county. Does America gain glory by subduing such a target?’
‘Wake Island was lots smaller,’ I retorted quickly, ‘and we gained a lot of glory there. You excise a cancer when it’s small, or you lose a life.’
Garza groaned at this forced analogy, and there would have been further debate had not our staff insisted that we reach a decision concerning the program for our meeting on religion, so we turned from one heated battleground to another.
Dr. Garza suggested a professor from a Catholic college in New Mexico, believing that this would provide continuity from the very first days to the present, but Quimper objected vigorously, and with reason: ‘I thought we settled that at our El Paso meeting. No more Catholics. Texas is a Protestant state, whose moral attitudes were determined by Protestants.’
‘You’re right,’ Garza conceded with no rancor. ‘I was just trying to advance the interests of my boys.’
‘Don’t blame you,’ Rusk interrupted. ‘But now I want to advance the interests of my boys. My grandparents were Quaker and Baptist. Very few Quakers in Texas, thank God, because the two religions—’
‘What two religions?’ Miss Cobb interrupted.
‘Quaker and Texas, they don’t mix. I recommend we invite a Baptist minister.’
‘Now wait, Rance,’ Quimper protested. ‘Texas was settled primarily by Methodists. And I’d like to hear an honest Methodist interpretation.’ After the two men wrestled over this without reaching a solution, Rusk asked: ‘Lorena, what are you?’ and Miss Cobb said: ‘What the Southern gentlefolk always were, Episcopalian, but in Texas we’ve carried little weight.’
The four now turned to me, and Quimper asked: ‘Barlow, you’ve never said what religion you are,’ and I replied: ‘Home Lutheran,’ and they all asked: ‘What’s that?’ and I explained: ‘When I taught school in a small town in the Panhandle the board was very nosy about their teachers’ religion, and my crusty old principal told me: “Tell ’em you’re a Home Lutheran. Very devout, but you conduct your services in the privacy of your home.” I did, and got away with it.’
Rusk took me up on this: ‘Since we can’t agree among the four of us, and since Texas has almost no Home Lutherans, whom would you suggest?’
After making a chain of phone calls I came up with an almost perfect solution, and at our November meeting in Tyler, where a few late roses were still in bloom, I presented him, a tall, thin man in his fifties, wise of countenance and witty of eye. He looked like a clergyman, even in mufti, for you could see that he had been trained to speak in a certain way and to enforce his words with effective gestures. What was equally important to our purpose, for he was to outline a weighty and sometimes contentious topic, he had a sense of humor.
I allowed him to introduce himself, which he did gracefully: ‘I’m an ordained minister, professor in the Bible department, Abilene Christian College. The Roman numerals after my name indicate how many generations of my family have served in Texas. I’m Joel Job Harrison VI.’ He asked our forbearance as he explained the religious history of his family, for he said that if we understood it, we would better appreciate the religious tempests which had from time to time swept Texas:
‘The first Joel Job Harrison came to the Trinity River in the early 1820s, as a secret Methodist circuit rider sent down to infiltrate Catholic Mexico. Devout religionists in Kentucky gave him explicit instructions: “Combat the papists.” He seems to have been a violent defender of his faith, conducting secret meetings up and down the rivers, and as you know, he helped ignite the sparks that led to open warfare against Santa Anna. Faithful to his own preachings, he led one of the critical charges at San Jacinto, then roamed across Texas during the republic, building the Methodist churches that had not been permitted under Mexican rule. He was not a likable man, if we can believe the diarists of that time, for some of them dismiss him with contempt. But he was a warrior, and Texas Methodism owes him many debts.
‘Joel Job III was one of those titanic clergymen who sweep across Texas from time to time. Reading his Bible one day, he made the discovery that projected him into endless battles against the Baptists, the Presbyterians and all other infidel sects. It was a curious thing. He came to believe that whereas John the Baptist had clearly baptized Jesus Christ in the Jordan River by a process which could only be called total immersion, so that there was Biblical justification for the rite as performed by the Baptists, there was no holy obligation to keep on using it, and he began to preach strong and beautifully reasoned sermons against the Baptists, and especially against the sect called the Campbellites.
‘Well, the Baptists weren’t going to sit by and allow this to happen, so they threw three of their ablest men against him, one after another, and great public debates were held across North Texas. A tent would be raised or a building rented, and J. J. Harrison III, in heavy black suit and red string tie, his white hair flowing, would take on the current Baptist champion. For five successive days they would debate each afternoon, two o’clock to five, and thousands would lean forward to catch their words. Joel Job III had a majestic voice, a gift for scorn and an unrelenting sense for the theological jugular; both he and his adversary believed they were fighting for immortal souls. Their debates became famous, and the men were fondly referred to as “our peerless ecclesiastical pugilists.” You can find in old bookstores printed versions of their battles: “The Harrison-Brand Debates,” “The Harrison-Cleaver Debates” or “The Famous Harrison-Harper Debates.” Harrison’s name always came first because he was the more famous arguer and the one who attracted the crowds, but he confessed in a letter to a fellow Methodist clergyman:
‘I always felt that I had defended Our Cause ably, but I rarely felt that I had won, because those Baptists threw against me some of the most tenacious debaters I had ever faced. They were men of learning, devotion and infinite skill in the nasty tricks of argument.
‘Lanning Harper was the ablest man I ever battled, and in our four series in 1890 to 1893, I fear that he bested me on several occasions. Looking back on those days, I think of him as a Lion of Judah and I would not care to face him again tomorrow. He had a wry sense of humor, and several times, after we had lambasted each other on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we would unite on Thursday against the Presbyterians, whose doctrine of fatal predestination we simply could not comprehend, and it was Harper who introduced the doggerel which summarized our contempt. I can still hear the audiences laughing when he recited:
‘We are the sweet selected few,
The rest of you be damned;
There’s room enough in hell for you,
We don’t want heaven crammed.’
He was smiling as he finished these lines, but abruptly he turned grave, for now he must share with us a somber incident in his family history, one which produced both anguish and theological glory:
‘Throughout the lives of I, II and III, my ancestors were aware, vaguely at times, of a powerful, primitive force gathering strength on the horizon. It centered upon a man named Alexander Campbell, born a good Presbyterian in County Antrim, Ireland, in 1788. The birth of a child forced Campbell to decide what he thought about baptism, and the more he studied the Bible the more convinced he became that Presbyterians were out of step with the New Testament when they merely sprinkled a baby and called that baptism, while the Baptists were correct to insist upon total immersion. To the scandal of his time, he left the Presbyterians with loud renunciation and became a Baptist.
‘He didn’t stay long, for although he granted that his new church was right on baptism, he found it wrong on almost e
‘His theories swept across the American South like a firestorm, with converts announcing themselves as Campbellites. And from what established churches did these converts come? From the Methodists and Baptists. The infection grew malignant, with entire congregations quitting the known churches and moving en masse into Campbell’s arms.
‘Well, Joel Job III as a faithful Methodist realized that something must be done to stanch this hemorrhaging, so during the great debates, after lambasting the Presbyterians on Thursday, he and his Baptist adversary would unite on Friday to excoriate the Campbellites, who did not like that pejorative name. They called themselves the Churches in Christ, for they believed that they preserved the simplicity that Jesus would have approved. I have several pamphlets which preserve Joel Job’s attacks on the Campbellites, and they are rather sulphurous. Again and again he warned: “Do not lure good Methodists into your infamous trap.” ’
Our speaker paused to reflect upon those tempestuous days, then squared his shoulders and revealed an astonishing fact: ‘In 1894 the religious world of Texas was shocked when this tower of Methodism, this peerless debater, went into seclusion, studied his Bible, and emerged with a startling revelation: “I can no longer support the Methodist church as it now exists. I am departing from it to become a minister in the Church of Christ.” This was trebly scandalous, since he was in effect joining forces with his ancient foes, the Campbellites, against whom he had so furiously inveighed.’
Harrison shook his head, even now startled by his ancestor’s apostasy, but then he smiled like a little boy: ‘I warned you that we took religion seriously, and as you might expect, in his new reincarnation Joel Job III became a conservative terror. Apparently he hungered for a simpler, stabler form of worship, so before six months had passed he found himself joyously in the middle of the great fight which tore his new religion apart.
‘You may smile when I tell you what four innovations he fought against. Missionary societies and organizations, because they were not specifically designated in the Bible. Sunday School, because he could find no justification in the Bible. Rebaptism of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians who wanted to join the new church: “If one baptism was good enough for John and Jesus, it’s good enough for Farmer Jones of Waco.” And his most violent hatred: instrumental music inside the church, for he could not find it mentioned as such in the New Testament. He particularly despised organs, which he felt to be an Italian-French contamination and therefore probably Catholic.
‘Have you ever read an account of what happened when he learned that members of his own congregation had collected funds for the purchase of an organ? He found that they had got the money by conducting an entertainment of singing at which punch was served. The punch contained no alcohol, but when he shouted about it from his pulpit you’d have thought it was hundred-and-fifty-proof rum.
‘When the organ was brought within the church, he threatened to burn the place down, and was halted only by the liberals, who threw eggs at him while newspaper reporters watched.’
Our speaker shivered, recalling the shock of those fevered days, but soon the inevitable smile returned: ‘As you probably know, I am myself Church of Christ and happy with the way my ecclesiastical life has developed. Believe me, I burn no churches.’
‘Would you object,’ Rusk asked, ‘if I called you a modern-day Campbellite?’ and he replied: ‘Yes, I would. My church is much bigger in concept than the doctrine of one man. Why not just call me a Christian?’
He waved his hands as if to brush away the great schism of which Joel Job III had been so conspicuous a part. ‘With his son, J. J. IV, our family got involved in Prohibition, which racked Texas politics. He stormed the state with his old Methodist evangelism resurgent. He gloried in hauling onto his stage mothers and children made destitute by the drunkenness of their men, and if some sad bank teller absconded with three thousand dollars, he trumpeted the case in forty counties, proving that alcohol had done the man in. He smashed his way into saloons, offered to wrestle peddlers of booze, and harried Texas into voting for Prohibition. On the day it became national law he cried at a great mass meeting in Dallas: “The soul of America has been saved.”
‘Now he stepped forward as a watchdog of enforcement, riding with sheriffs as they raided speakeasies and testifying in court repeatedly. Those favoring the free movement of contraband up from Mexico or down from Oklahoma said of my grandfather: “Nothing wrong with Joel Job IV that a couple of cold beers wouldn’t fix,” but he attained his greatest fame, and I think power, in the election of 1928 when he opposed the candidacy of Al Smith, partly because Smith was Catholic but even more because Al favored demon rum.
‘When Smith was nominated in Houston my grandfather shouted from a dozen pulpits: “Darkest day in Texas history. Defames the sacred memory of the Alamo.” And from that moment on he toured the state relentlessly, preaching against Smith and the Democrats who proposed to lead the nation astray. Like all Harrisons, Number IV was a Democrat, but Al Smith was more than he could stomach, and after the votes were counted, the Republican National Committee sent him a telegram of gratitude for having moved Texas into their column: “You have done a masterful job for Texas and the entire nation.” Grandfather believed this, and one of my earliest memories is watching as he took this telegram from his portfolio to let me read it. Tears streamed down his face as he said: “In 1928 we fought the good fight. But in 1932 the forces of evil struck back.” He was speaking of repeal. He died believing that America was sliding to perdition because of its tolerance of drink.’
Quimper, a heavy drinker, interrupted: ‘But, Reverend Harrison, didn’t you recently lead the fight against alcohol? In those three western counties which held a referendum on saloons?’
‘I did, and I’m proud to say we kept those counties dry. I consider alcohol an abiding evil.’
‘Thank you,’ Quimper said, bowing as if to a debating adversary.
Then Harrison said: ‘I share these things with you to remind you that in Texas, we take religion seriously. It can even be, as I shall demonstrate in a moment, a matter of life and death.’ He then launched into his formal paper, which I shall summarize in his words:
‘Except during the republic, when secularism ran rampant, religion has always been a major force in Texas life, and often the major force. No state in the Union pays greater deference to religion or supports it more vigorously. The founding fathers were unequivocal. Stephen F. Austin sought for his colony only devout Christians. Even a somewhat suspect hero like William Travis of Alamo fame, who dealt in slaves and deserted his family, could in 1835 write to the leaders of his church:
We are very destitute of religious instruction in this extensive fine country … About five educated and talented young preachers would find employment in Texas, and no doubt would produce much good in this benighted land. Texas is composed of the shrewdest and most intelligent population of any new country on earth, therefore a preacher to do good must be respectable and talented. Remember Texas.
‘Texas became a state partly because loyal Protestants from the North and the South refused to accept Catholicism or any established church as the state religion, and much of the animosity anglos in the new nation of Texas felt toward their Mexican citizens along the border stemmed from the fact that those loyal Catholics adhered to customs which were morally offensive to the puritanic Protestant majority in the northern parts of the state. Even today you less traditionally devout members of this Task Force cannot comprehend how embit
‘The religious impulse influences Texas life at every level and in the most unexpected ways. To this day it keeps most stores closed on Sunday. It determined that Texas would lead the nation in the fight for Prohibition. It dominates school boards. It accounts for great universities like Southern Methodist, which Joel Job III helped found, and Texas Christian and Abilene Christian, which J.J. V was so instrumental in financing. In today’s world it explains why so many radio and television stations allocate much of their time to media ministers, who collect more funds from Texas listeners than from any other state.
‘Indeed, if one studied only the outward manifestations of religion, one would be justified in concluding that Texas is now and always has been the most Christian of nations, and it is understandable that many Texans, and perhaps most, believe this to be the case. We love our churches and defend them vociferously.
‘But if one steps back dispassionately and assesses with cold eye the actual conditions in Texas, one must wonder how deep this religious conviction runs. You are more likely to be murdered in Odessa than in any other city in the nation. It and Grand Forks, North Dakota, are of comparable size, but Odessa produces twenty-nine point eight murders per thousand; Grand Forks, one. Dallas gunmen shoot more police officers in a year than do the citizens of Philadelphia, Detroit, San Diego, Phoenix, Baltimore, St. Louis, San Francisco and Boston combined. Such amazing figures can be explained only by some inherent Texas differential. Our state officials go regularly to jail for blatant offenses which do not occur with such frequency in states like Iowa and South Dakota. Each autumn three or four Texas high schools watch their football teams forfeit all their games because they broke the rules, knowingly. Deaths on Texas highways from drunk driving are shattering in their regularity.