The Stammering Century

by Gilbert Seldes

  “ ‘But it shall be for those—’ when they are cleansed; thank God, they can be made clean.

  “We want this ‘dirty boy’ to be clean. The Lord scrub him today. (Laughter) Thank God, He can make the filthiest clean. May the dirty doctors repent and be made clean. The Lord scrub them to-day. Let all the people say Amen.

  “Audience:—‘Amen!’ (This came as a ‘sound of many waters’ from the thousands present.)

  “Dr. Dowie:—That is right.

  “A voice:—Hallelujah, Dowie!

  “Dr. Dowie:—I am on the road. (Laughter and applause.)”

  It would be almost impossible to catalogue all of the things which Dowie hated and forbade. In the first issue of the Zion Banner, “a weekly-semi-secular paper devoted to the extension of the kingdom of God and the elevation of man,” there is a badly drawn cartoon showing “Zion unfurling her banner for the conquest of the world for God.” The motley host in opposition includes figures or banners representing war, drama, society, lust, Romanism, the mob rule of the Masons (with a phallic symbol on their banner), the unclean press, boss rule, trades unions, hog raisers, doctors, tobacco dealers (the package of chewing tobacco is marked “bread of hell”), druggists (represented as sorcerers), and rum sellers. But this is not all. In the advertisements for Zion City we read that there were no harlots’ dens, or gambling hells, or opium joints, or secret lodges, or theaters, or oyster bars, and, in a 330-page book by the Reverend John Alex. Dowie, Elijah the Restorer, he attacks Protected Adultery and Impurity in the Home, the Devilish Spirit of the Daily Newspaper Press, the Polluted Advertisements of the Modern Religious Press, Church Apostasy, and Contempt for God’s Messenger, Unscriptural Baptism (he believed in triune immersion), Craftiness in Devouring the Patrimony of Widows and Orphans, and the Blighting Influence on the Young of Bad Books and Pictures. There was no dancing in Zion City and billboards warned visitors that “swearing, smoking and bad language of any sort are not allowed.” He anticipated, in short, the complete program of the puritan of 1927 and erected his dislikes into a system of religion.

  The success of this religion is startling. The stout little figure of Dowie with its bright bald dome fringed by black hair and set off by the conventional patriarchal beard of white was, to the believers, a messiah. Through him they were in communication with God and, more important to them, with Christ, the healer; but the price paid for this immediacy of relationship was high. Mrs. Eddy gave her disciples unalloyed happiness, but all that Dowie offered in normal life was negative, and it was a triumph of intelligence for him to transform his negations into a positive crusade. He made each member of the Church a hater of the things denied. He gave his community the sense of living in a beleaguered city out of which, at great peril, they made sorties against the besiegers. Their purity and their God were always in danger and Dowie played on this endlessly. He reprinted all the vicious attacks made upon him and so became more precious in the eyes of his followers and more justified in the tyrannical powers he assumed. He was in everything an absolute dictator and justified himself by the fury of his enemies. When he declared himself the messenger prophesied in Malachi he said, “I have the right to stand here and say in Zion you have to do what I tell you! Oh! the whole church? Yes! the whole church—Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, Episcopal. It is the most daring thing I ever said. The time has come; I tell the church universal everywhere, you have to do what I tell you, do you hear? You have to do what I tell you, because I am the Messenger of God’s covenant.”

  Again two years later, when he took the next step in identification, his first words were another command: “You have to do what I tell you, because what I tell you is in accordance with that word, and because I am the Messenger of the Covenant, Elijah the Restorer.”

  He created the Zion Restoration Host, numbering as many as 10,000 in all parts of the world, and used it as a sort of flying wedge under the following extraordinary oath:

  “I vow in the name of God, my Father, and of Jesus Christ, His Son and my Saviour and of the Holy Ghost, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, that I will be a faithful member of Zion Restoration Host, organized at Shiloh Tabernacle in the city of Zion on Lord’s Day, September 21, 1902, and I declare that I recognize John Alexander Dowie, General Overseer of the C.C.C. in Zion, of which I am a member, in his three-fold office, as the Messenger of the Covenant, the Prophet foretold by Moses, and Elijah the Restorer.

  “I promise to the fullest extent of my powers, to obey all rightful orders issued by him directly or by his properly appointed officers, and to proceed to any part of the world, wherever he shall direct, as a member of Zion Restoration Host, and that all family ties and obligations, and all relations to all human governments shall be held subordinate of this vow, this declaration and this promise. This I make in the presence of God and of the visible and invisible witnesses.”

  Command over the lives of the ordinary members of the church was not so definite, but he drew from them a tithe of their earnings. He dictated the way of their lives and virtually compelled them to work in the factories he built at the comparatively liberal wage he chose to pay. In time of stringency, he ordered them to deposit money in the bank of which he was the head, saying: “I have a list of all persons in Zion who have made no deposit since I sent out my first command, and I tell you we have no use for them. If they don’t show down to-morrow they will be expelled from Zion. I am not afraid of the financial condition of Zion. I do not know what fear is. The member of Zion who fears to put his money into our hands for safe keeping is a coward and we have no use for him here. He must get out. We can’t have him here for he is opposing the Lord by refusing to entrust his wealth in Zion.”

  And, in the same year, he ordered Dowieites from all parts of the world to sell what they had and to bring their fortunes to Zion City. Like many other founders of communities he had a yearning for Mexico, a country favorable to his health, and one of his last enterprises was the Zion Paradise Plantation there. To it he compelled the individuals and the industries of Zion City to contribute money they could not spare. As one reads the advertising literature of the community, one finds Dowie’s name at the head of every enterprise. He bought nearly 7,000 acres of land and, dedicating it to God, held the property in his own hands, leasing it for a term of 1,100 years at high prices. He was in charge of the Zion City general stores, and president of the educational institutions, and director of the lace industries, and president of the building and manufacturing association which took in all the activities of Zion City. Even the sugar and confectionery business bore his name at the head, and he managed the bank and the publishing house as certainly as he bossed the Theocratic Party he founded. He permitted no question of his divine inspiration. If his healing proved anything, it proved his right to command the lives and fortunes of every man who accepted his leadership: “If my ministry is from heaven, you must believe what I say and you must do what I want. God has sent a man and he has written his mission over twenty-three years. What more do you want? I tell you, it is an awful thing to have a message from God. . . . It is an awful thing to stand between the living and the dead, but it has been laid upon me. You have to do what I tell you, because what I tell you is in accordance with that Word, and because I am the Messenger of God’s Covenant.”

  Even when he was approaching disaster, he compelled every voter in Zion City to cast his ballot for Roosevelt in 1904.

  Dowie’s high moment was at the creation of Zion City. With a great flourish, he compared himself to Carnegie, Frick, and Rockefeller and announced the purchase of the site on Lake Michigan, 42 miles from Chicago. One year from the day the land was consecrated, the gates were opened and, within ten months, Zion City was incorporated under the laws of the state. Dowie had built himself a great tower from which he intended to take the largest photograph ever made and to look down upon his people. Actually, the first important edifice in the City was the lace factory, the story of which illustrates almost all of
Dowie’s characteristics. The hysterical style of his own publication gives a rather incomplete account:

  “Five years before, the ‘Little White Dove,’ Leaves of Healing, had gone forth across the ocean with its Message of Salvation, Healing, and Holy Living.

  “It had gone into the hands of a family of brothers in far-away Nottingham, England.

  “The truth of the Everlasting Gospel which that little Messenger of God brought to them found an answering echo in their hearts.

  “They believed that Zion was of God.

  “They were skilled and successful manufacturers of lace. They understood perfectly every detail of the business.

  “As the years went by, God prepared them for the wonderful purposes which He had in view for them, and when Zion City was announced His Spirit put in their hearts the desire to come to America and to engage in the manufacture of lace in Zion for God.

  “One of the brothers came to Zion in Chicago and preliminary arrangements were made.

  “The General Overseer purchased the Lace Factory near Nottingham, England, for Zion, and preparations were pushed rapidly to completion for bringing the factory to America. . . .

  “The annual imports of lace to this country amount to eighteen millions of dollars, and the enemy recognized that with that great market for its product, Zion Lace Industries would quickly become one of the greatest manufacturing institutions in the country.

  “Every attempt was made to throw suspicion upon the motives of the General Overseer, to belittle Zion Lace Industries and to create a lack of confidence on the part of Zion’s people. . . .

  “But in spite of it all Zion prevailed. . . .

  “Then began a terrific struggle on the part of organized labor in the United States to prevent the bringing in of these Lace Experts.

  “Again Zion triumphed over all her enemies. The experts and the machinery were brought in, as the world now well knows.

  “On the eighth day of October, 1900, a little party of Zion’s people went to Zion City, where they consecrated the site of the first building to be erected by Zion in the Coming City. . . .

  “This building is now complete, and its three large floors are filled with happy workers, living together in harmony and peace and purity as one large family.”

  The actual facts hardly rise to that level. It is even doubtful whether Leaves of Healing was the instrument of this business conversion, for the manufacturer alluded to, an Englishman named Stephenson, had been performing some cures by laying on of hands before he heard of Dowie. They entered into correspondence and Dowie saw a golden opportunity, for there was a high tariff against Nottingham lace and none was manufactured in this country. Stephenson was invited to America, and married Dowie’s sister. Together they invested nearly a half a million dollars for the purpose of importing machinery and skilled operatives from England. It was Dowie’s custom to import or summon adherents, sometimes making no provision for housing them or giving them employment. The disaffected manager of the lace factory declared that the building erected could have housed 22 machines but contained only 18, and that the machinery had often to be stopped because the financial managers of Zion City did not pay the bills for yarn which had been ordered. The factory was overcapitalized and, according to the manager, Dowie avoided all investigation by a wily trick. He had promised the stockholders that, if the dividends were not paid after one year, he would issue a financial report. This left him free of all interference if dividends were paid, and they were—out of the original capital.

  It is unlikely that good Dowieites would have called for any investigation. Their minds, none too bright to begin with, were alternately lulled by endless ceremonials or distracted by the vituperative outbursts of their prophet. There were three fixed prayer meetings daily in nearly every home and Bible readings in the Tabernacle at odd hours. The Sunday services lasted four hours, with endless processions of children, youths, adults, and old men and women (many of them dressed in the mortar boards and gowns which Dowie affected), and recitations of the apostles’ creed and the ten commandments, and singing by the choir, and scriptural reading, and Church notices, and involved prayers, and, the great event of the day, Dowie’s attack on some institution or person he disliked. Rarely, he made a positive statement as shocking as his negations:

  “I stand for the Restoration. As Elijah the Restorer I desire to bring back again the strength of the primitive man; and I believe from my spirit that if the yellow, the brown, the black, and the white man could, in the Christ our Lord, and in purity, mingle together in one great family we would probably get the type of man Adam was, and which we lost at Babel when language was confounded and man was scattered. . . . I trust that there shall be no difference, but that we shall have marriages in Zion between all the families of the one great race upon the earth. . . . I defend miscegenation.”

  In 1903, perhaps feeling the uncertainty of his fortunes, Dowie declared a foreign war to distract his people. With tremendous advance publicity, he descended upon Madison Square Garden in New York. Before an enormous crowd he came, flanked by his Overseers, advanced to the pulpit, and raised his delicate little hands as a signal for the choir to lead in singing The Hallelujah Chorus from— naturally—The Messiah. After the usual ceremonies, he announced that the doors would be closed and began reading the scriptures. Suddenly several hundred people moved to the doors and, as the infuriated preacher ordered a hymn to be sung, two or three thousand left the Garden. The whole of the sermon thereafter was a peculiar mingling of biblical exegesis and personal commands. With his rich Scot accent, Dowie went on, “Eyes have they, yet they see not. Ears have they, yet they hear not. I shall ask the gentlemen of the press to behave and not to talk . . . but they took hold of the Lord Jesus and they hurried him to the brink of the precipice and I have passed through the midst of my enemies and came to New York. . . .”

  The New York press compared him with William Jennings Bryan and credited him with the combined genius of Morgan, General Booth, Croker, and Barnum. The Sun was cynical about his efforts to reclaim the modern Sodom and sink of iniquity and mentioned the fact that reporters’ passes were issued for one day only so that, if anything unfavorable were written, the offending newspaper could be barred thereafter. In the program of the revival there was an advertisement for the Zion City Bank of which the last line was taken from the 19th chapter of Luke: “Wherefore then cast not thou thy money into the bank?”

  The New York visitation, as Dowie called it, was a failure and, in the next year, the prophet departed on a European trip.[1] Later, troubles having broken out at Zion City, Dowie went to Mexico, leaving Wilbur Glenn Voliva, a devoted disciple, to look after his interests. Voliva either could not, or would not, check the hostility of the other Overseers and, in an outburst of anger, Dowie was deposed. What friends he might have held were turned against him by a vicious attack he made on his wife and, on the second of April, 1906, the Overseers wired Dowie “protesting against your extravagances, hypocrisy, misrepresentations, exaggerations, misuse of investment, tyranny, and injustice. You are hereby suspended from office and membership for polygamous teaching and other grave charges. See letter. You must answer these satisfactorily to officers and people. Quietly retire. Further interference will precipitate complete exposure, rebellion, legal proceedings. Your statement of stupendously magnificent financial outlook is extremely foolish in view of thousands suffering through your shameful mismanagement. Zion and creditors will be protected at all costs.”

  The charge of immorality came as a great shock to the followers of Dowie, for his personal life was generally considered irreproachable. An impartial investigator discovered that, as old age was setting in, Dowie had become indiscreet. It was rumored that he proposed to divorce his wife and to marry again and the name of a Swiss woman was frequently mentioned. Dowie had begun to study and sympathize with the Mormon doctrines and there was talk even of unnatural vices. In his private library were discovered copies of the Decamer
on and Heptameron, unexpurgated Arabian Nights, and an appropriately illustrated Gil Bias, “for which he had paid $600 of money received for religious purposes.” After Voliva and the Overseers had abolished autocracy in Zion City, they discovered that Dowie’s finances were a trifle shaky. He had once declared against all borrowing and again that he was authorized to borrow $7,000,000 in order to hasten the kingdom of God but, when depression set in and he could no longer live as he liked, “as luxuriously as the Pope,” he borrowed and did not trouble to remark that the land he offered as security was either mortgaged or sold. The new Elijah died in 1907 and, at the funeral services at Zion City, 300 of the 6,000 people present were still devoted to him; the rest had gone over to the new management. Twenty years later Voliva sold a portion of Zion City for the reported sum of $9,000,000. The Messiah had paid dividends, after all.

  [1] There is at least one record in contemporary letters of his European influence. Making his way through the streets of Dublin on the 16th of June, 1904, Mr. Leopold Bloom picked up a circular which set his active mind at work:

  “Elijah is coming. Washed in the blood of the lamb. Come on, you winefizzling, ginsizzling, boozeguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms, and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie, that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity ain’t no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that he’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus! . . .” (James Joyce: Ulysses.)