In the Battle Between Woodrow and Wilson, Wilson Lost. So Did the World.

Judge Andrew Napolitano has written a book, Theodore and Woodrow. It is on the first decades of the 20th century, when the Progressive movement captured American politics. Except for the 1920’s — Harding and Coolidge — Progressivism has never surrendered political control in the United States.

I spoke with him on July 22, at Mises University, the annual week-long training program for undergraduates, which is sponsored by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He was presenting a week-long series of lectures on the Constitution and the free market. The students get very good training on how the United States Constitution has been reinterpreted over the years, especially during the Progressive era.

I gave him some background that almost nobody knows. The essence of the battle for constitutional interpretation in the 20th century is found in the names “Woodrow” and “Wilson.”

THOMAS WOODROW WILSON[amazon asin=1595553517&template=*lrc ad (right)]

Woodrow Wilson’s full name was Thomas Woodrow Wilson, but he never went by Thomas. He always went by Woodrow. Woodrow is a strange name for a little boy to have. It is certainly a strange first name. As a middle name, it was okay, because it was his mother’s maiden name. So is my middle name. But I do not call myself by this middle name.

Woodrow Wilson’s father was Joseph Ruggles Wilson. He was the senior permanent bureaucrat in the southern Presbyterian Church in the late 19th century. He maintained the position of Stated Clerk for a third of a century. He was part of what was known as Old School Presbyterianism. This was the most conservative theological faction in 19th-century America — the true hard-liners. They were committed to a long document, the Westminster Confession of Faith (1648), plus two other documents, the Shorter Catechism in the Larger Catechism. These are the most detailed creedal documents in American history.

The position of the Old School was this: in order to become an elder in the Presbyterian Church, you had to swear your allegiance to these three long, highly detailed documents. A candidate for eldership was allowed certain reservations or exceptions, but these had to be approved by the presbytery, the regional bureaucratic structure. This applied to teaching elders (ministers/preachers) and ruling elders (laymen who had votes in the local congregation and the presbytery). In terms of Constitutional language, these were “original intent” interpreters of the foundational documents, i.e., the strict constructionists.[amazon asin=0930464745&template=*lrc ad (right)]

In contrast to the Old School was the New School. New School Presbyterians were much looser with regard to the rigor by which they enforced ministerial allegiance to the documents. The New School became dominant in the North after the Civil War, but not in the Southern Presbyterian Church. There, the Old School was dominant from the denomination’s creation in 1861, when the Civil War began, until the early 20th century.

There was a third group. These were the liberals. The liberals hid under the loose-construction confessional umbrella of New School Presbyterianism, but they in fact had almost no use whatsoever for any of the creedal documents. In order to get ordained, and then get lifetime salaries as ministers, they crossed their fingers. That is why I titled my book, Crossed Fingers. The subtitle is straightforward, How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church. I specifically was referring to the Northern Presbyterian Church, but the same tactics were used by liberals in the middle the 20th century to capture the Southern Presbyterian Church. The two denominations reunited in 1983. The resulting denomination is liberal.

Woodrow Wilson’s mother had a brother, James Woodrow. James Woodrow was by far the most prominent liberal in the Southern Presbyterian Church in the late 19th century. He was a believer in theistic evolution. He openly stated his views, which was the cause of battles against him. His nephew Woodrow agreed with him. He was repeatedly brought to trial and officially sanctioned at the church’s national level, but the church never succeeded in removing him. He taught alongside his brother at Columbia Theological Seminary, the main seminary of the denomination. It trained ministers.

[amazon asin=0990463109&template=*lrc ad (right)]Woodrow was a Ph.D. in science (Heidelberg University). In 1884, he began to teach that the Bible’s account of man’s creation was not inconsistent with Darwin’s view. The furor grew. In 1886-87, the seminary shut down for a year because of the controversy. Yet it never fired him. He finally retired in 1905. The seminary then officially rescinded its previous criticisms. He was totally victorious. (For a detailed account of this controversy, click here.) He became the president of South Carolina College in 1891. Finally, in 1901, the denomination capitulated completely. He was elected as the moderator of the Synod of Georgia.

When Wilson became president of Princeton University in 1902, replacing an Old School minister, Francis Patton, he oversaw a complete transformation of the university. It began to teach straight Darwinism in its science courses — not a trace of theistic evolution.

James Woodrow died in 1907.

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