Like a Giant among Dwarfs: Robert Sandeman

On April 17, 1771, Ezra Stiles, then pastor of the Second Congregational Church of Newport, Rhode Island, wrote in his diary about something he had recently seen in the newspapers:

that lately died at Danbury in Connecticutt [sic] Mr Robert Sandeman Founder of the Sect of Sandemanians. He came from Scotland into New Engld Autumn 1764. then about aet. 47. as he then told me.

Stiles (portrait below) would go on to serve as President of Yale College from 1778 until his death in 1795. An influential church leader during his day, he met Sandeman when the Scotsman first arrived in America, landing at Boston in 1764. Even before that time, Stiles and several of his fellow Congregationalist pastors had taken a wary interest in Sandeman and the independent Christian group of which he was the leading light.

It's hardly a stretch to say that Stiles, like many other great men, was interested in just about everything. The same was true of his friend Benjamin Franklin. But not everything captured Stiles' attention as did the life and times and demise of Sandeman. From the diary entry for August 5, 1772:

In the Boston print [i.e., newspaper] of 3d Inst. it is said.

"A Monument has been cut in this Town by Mr. Henry Christian Geyer, Stone cutter at the South End, to be sent to Connecticutt: it is executed on the composit Order with twisted Pillars, and the other proper Ornaments, having a Cherub's Head on Wings, and the following Label from his Mouth Rev. xiv 6, 7. --On the Tomb-stone is this Inscription.

Here lies

Until the Resurrection

The Body of

ROBERT SANDEMAN

A Native of Perth, North Britain,
who in the face of continual Opposition
From all Sorts of Men
Long and boldly contended
For the ancient Faith:
That the bare work of JESUS CHRIST,
without a Deed, or Thought, on the part of Man,
Is sufficient to present
The chief of Sinners
Spotless before God:
To declare this blessed Truth

As testified in the holy Scriptures

He left his Country--he left his Friends,

And after much patient Suffering

Finished his Labors

At DANBURY

2d April 1771,

aged 53 years.

Deigned Christ come so nigh to us

As not to count it shame

To call us Brethren--shall we blush

At aught that bears his Name.

Nay let us boast in his Reproach

And glory in his Cross,

When he appears, one smile from him

Shall far o'erpay our Loss."

The April 3, 1826 issue of The Christian Baptist includes an exchange between a semi-anonymous writer and the editor, Alexander Campbell. The initial letter, says Campbell, was written by one of the most worthy bishops in Virginia; whose standing in the learned world obtained for him the honorary degree of D. D. and whose piety and intelligence refused the title as a badge of popery. That, along with the signature R. B. S., leads to the conclusion that the letter's author was none other than Robert B. Semple, a great leader among the Baptists in Virginia at the time.

In his letter, Semple offers a number of compliments to Campbell as a preacher and writer. He also lists a few thoughtful and well-worded criticisms. Campbell then responds to Semple's letter. Among the points that Campbell takes up is the assertion that he is basically a Haldanian or Sandemanian, i.e. that he is a follower of the brothers Robert and James Haldane; or yet another church reformer from Scotland, Robert Sandeman. In his reply, Campbell acknowledges that he has learned from an array of writers, including the likes of the Haldanes and Sandeman, Luther and Calvin and Wesley. But, he adds, I do not believe that any one of them had clear and consistent views of the Christian religion as a whole.

Then, Campbell says more about Sandeman. He explains that many years before he had taken up a special project. He explored the question of rational versus experiential conversion: When a person initially comes to Christ, which is prior, the mind or the heart? Campbell admits that at the beginning of his studies, he was prejudiced against Robert Sandeman, the champion of rational religion. Instead, he had favored James Hervey, whose popular book Dialogues between Theron and Aspasio breathes the warm spirit of the revivalism of his day. Campbell mentions that, with the Bible nearby, he studied many authors, including Hervey, Marshall, Bellamy, Glass, and Cudworth. But as he went along, he discovered Sandeman to be like a giant among dwarfs . . . like Sampson with the gates and posts of Gaza on his shoulders (228).

So who was Robert Sandeman? And why did he so impress the likes of Stiles and Campbell? More to come in future posts.

Back in CT

Abigail was one of the readers during "Children's Sunday" this week at the Rocky Hill Congregational Church. She did a great job.


Benjamin was one of the seniors recognized that morning.

On Monday, Chloe and I had lunch at Bangkok Gardens in New Haven. Aubrey and Ben don't like exotic Asian food (!), and went for pizza slices instead.

Later that afternoon, I took Ben to see the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It houses, among other things, Yale's copy of the Gutenburg Bible, printed in 1455. The book in the background isn't a reflection. It's the other of the two volumes.

Go to Yale for Free

I'm back in New England for the time being. Woke up to rain, which is precisely what these Connecticut Yankees didn't want. This July has been their wettest one on record (not counting the year they had a hurricane). Today's showers will likely push the total for the month to over 9 inches. We're hoping for sunshine this afternoon.

Anyway, sometime back Yale University began its open courses program. What's that? The homepage says, Open Yale Courses provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public free of charge via the internet. The courses span the full range of liberal arts disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences.

So far, I've watched several of the segments from "Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible" and "Introduction to Psychology."

As you'd expect, the lectures are very good to excellent. The one complaint I have is that only one camera is used, and it stays on the instructor. So when watching the videos, you can't always see the visuals (slides or chalkboard) used in the classroom. But that's a minor thing.

I've mentioned this program once before. But just recently they added several more courses and basically doubled the number. So if you didn't see something that interested you the first time, you might check it out again. Here's the Yale Open Courses homepage.

Introducing Buddhism by Kenneth Scott Latourette

Of the courses I teach, the biggest challenge is "Introduction to World Religions." I don't know too many Buddhists; never been to a Hindu temple; and find myself confused by the many facets of historic and modern Judaism.

So, one of my commitments for 2009 is to do much more reading in the primary and secondary sources for these and other religious traditions that I hardly know. And, I'm trying to record what I learn. Here's a quick review of something I read this week:

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. Introducing Buddhism. New York: Friendship Press, 1956.

This is a booklet (64 pages) that briefly describes the origins, history and worldview of Buddhism. Latourette, one of the best-known American historians of Christianity, earned the Ph.D. from Yale in 1909 and taught at Yale College of China (yes, there was one) from 1910-1912. Beginning in 1921 and for many more years, he taught at Yale (in the US). By the time he wrote "Introducing Buddhism," Latourette was retired.

The first ten pages, "Beginnings of a Faith," provide a very good introduction to the origins and teachings of Buddhism. The second section, "Influences in the Changing Pattern," describe the early history and expansion of Buddhism in the centuries just after the death of its founder, Siddhartha Gautama.

As he continues, Latourette, a Baptist and longtime Sunday-school teacher, emphasizes (1) that Buddhism tends to flourish in undeveloped, unsophisticated societies, (2) that Buddhism has experienced decline in many areas where it was once much stronger (3) that there are irreconcilable differences between Buddhism and Christianity, and that (4) Christianity is superior in its effects and measurable contributions to a society.

Because the world has changed so much in the last 50-plus years, Latourette's descriptions of history are out-of-date. And, it's safe to say that he would be surprised and dismayed at the growth of Buddhism in the United States over the last few decades. I have no good way of evaluating his negative view of why Buddhism grows.

Tagged, Tellin', Taggin'

I got “tagged” by Wade Tannehill. Now I’m supposed to tell about five odd or interesting things about me that people would not ordinarily know. Here goes:

1. For starters: Some of the more interesting-or-odd things about me I just won’t tell here because they involve me breaking the law, acting immorally, being idiotic, or some combination thereof.

I sometimes think that God sends out Jack Bauer-type angels to protect young men during those high-testosterone years. (Their show would be called “At Least 24 Months”). Suffice it to say that one of the most interesting-and-odd things about me is that, thank God, I’m still alive.

2. Privilege and Accomplishment: From the ignoble to the proud. My second graduate degree is from Yale Divinity School, which looks like this.

I really loved the time I was able to spend at Yale. One of the neatest things was I got in on the last classes ever taught there by Abraham Malherbe, Brevard Childs, and Leander Keck. Along with colleagues like Robert Wilson, Wayne Meeks, and Christopher Seitz, they made up one of the best Bible Departments in the world. (Not that the School suffered when the next generation arrived: John J. Collins, Adela Yarbro Collins, Harry Attridge, Miroslav Volf, et al).

One of the University’s best-kept secrets is Victoria Hoffer, the lady who taught me Hebrew. A brilliant person and the mother of five, she’s one of those folks who can work on fifteen projects at once and get them all done on time, with flair, while smiling and well-dressed. Not to mention that she’s a terrific teacher and that she literally wrote the book on Biblical Hebrew. I’ll always thank God for her.

I should do more posts about my teachers. I didn’t say anything here about that other great school. No, not Harvard. It’s HARDING Graduate.

3. Bad habit: I’m what you might call “a hoarding messy.” (Try saying that with a high British accent). I irrationally hang on to all kinds of things. In fact, just about everything that comes into my possession I keep. And I don’t organize it very well. My wife will not allow my messy collections to take over the house, and I’ve actually developed some fairly-tidy habits there. But at my work office the demon runs wild. As I write this, my desk is piled about 4 inches deep in papers, folders, notebooks, etc., and there are nearly as many books stacked on the floor as there are on the shelves.

Now, that’s not particularly interesting, but there is an odd part here: there are pockets of my life where everything is immaculate. I’m very picky, for example, about what I eat, what I wear, written work, and presentations.

I sometimes comfort myself by remembering that people like me are said to be unusually creative. But most of the time, I just wish I would get a handle on my sloppy ways. And I worry. I worry about what this glaring bad habit says about my character and my inner world. I’m trying to do better.

4. Unforgettable experience: In the summer of 1985, I took five consecutive flights, over a period of 24 hours, and my ears wouldn’t clear. One flight attendant told me that giving me an aspirin was a no-no. At one point the pain was so terrible, I asked the Lord to just let me die.

Having made it from Manaus, Brazil to Altus, Oklahoma in that fashion, the next day I went to the doctor who gasped when he got a look at the raging infection in both of my ears. The day before my excruciating series of flights, I had gone with a group out onto the Amazon River. At the end of several hours on the water, the tour guide and captain stopped the boat’s engine and told us that if we wanted to tell our friends that we’d gone swimming in the Amazon, this was the time and place. I was one of the first to jump in.

Of course, not planning to swim in the river from which we had earlier pulled piranhas, none of us had a towel. I never thought to dry my ears. The big bad bugs of the Amazon went to work overnight, and I wound up learning some important lessons.

My ears got better. My life was forever changed by my experiences with the churches in Manaus and especially Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

5. Jobs: One of my first real jobs had me operating two commercial radio stations—one AM, one FM—for hours on end . . . by myself . . . for $3.50/hour. Hard to believe, but it’s true.

The AM was a Country & Western format--“KWHW 1450”--one of the truly great institutions of Altus. The FM was an automated Top 40. The intros and music for that station were purchased pre-recorded on these giant reel-to-reel tapes.

I would come to work at about 4:00 p.m. and record local news, sports, and weather, as well as the few commercials they’d let me do. Then, I’d put the carts into just the right slots in one of three huge carousels. The tapes and the carts had inaudible signals that tripped whatever was supposed to play next. That system for the FM station worked perfectly, almost all of the time.

At 6:00 p.m. I’d start a six-hour board shift on the AM, while minding the automated FM station that was broadcasting from literally the next room. For all of that time, I was the only person in the building (except for a couple of times I let a current girlfriend come in and check out the world of Mr. DJ; every job has its perks).

Long after midnight, the time when both stations signed off, I’d still be cleaning the machines, changing the tapes, and then setting up everything on the AM side for the morning man (the morning people are the prima Donnas of radio).

After several months of that, I told the program manager I was more than ready for that promised-but-overdue raise to $4.00/hour. With all the grace of a train wreck he let me know that I really hadn’t come along like he hoped I would and that he was reneging. I gave my two weeks notice on the spot. And so ended my glorious career in radio.

And here’s the tag: Ken Danley, Arlene Kasselman, Steve Duer, Greg Newton, and Royce Ogle? Yur-rit!