Social and Political Views
An advocate of Women's suffrage, temperance and Darwin's theory of evolution, and a foe of slavery and bigotry of all kinds (religious, racial and social), Beecher held that Christianity should adapt itself to the changing culture of the times. Later, in the 1870s and 1880s, Beecher became a prominent advocate for allowing Chinese immigration to continue to the United States, and is credited for delaying the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act until 1882. Beecher compared Chinese immigrants favorably to Irish immigrants, and argued that excluding the former from entering the country while allowing the latter was an unjust practice.
During the antebellum period, he raised funds to buy weapons for those willing to oppose slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, and the rifles bought with this money became known as "Beecher's Bibles". Politically active, he supported first the Free Soil Party and later the Republican Party.
During the American Civil War, his church raised and equipped a volunteer infantry regiment. Early in the war, Beecher pressed Lincoln to emancipate the slaves through a proclamation. The preacher later went on a speaking tour in England to undermine support for the South by explaining the North's war aims. Near the end of the war, when the Stars and Stripes were again raised at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Beecher was the main speaker.
During the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 he preached strongly against the strikers whose wages had been cut. His notorious "bread and water" sermon included "Man cannot live by bread alone but the man who cannot live on bread and water is not fit to live". The following Sunday heard "If you are being reduced, go down boldly into poverty". He then left for a two month vacation in Europe.
His last words were, "Now comes the mystery."
A strong belief Beecher lived by was as he said: "Hold yourself responsible for a higher Standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself".
Read more about this topic: Henry Ward Beecher
Famous quotes containing the words social and, social, political and/or views:
“A man’s social and spiritual discipline must answer to his corporeal. He must lean on a friend who has a hard breast, as he would lie on a hard bed. He must drink cold water for his only beverage. So he must not hear sweetened and colored words, but pure and refreshing truths. He must daily bathe in truth cold as spring water, not warmed by the sympathy of friends.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)
“In a land which is fully settled, most men must accept their local environment or try to change it by political means; only the exceptionally gifted or adventurous can leave to seek his fortune elsewhere. In America, on the other hand, to move on and make a fresh start somewhere else is still the normal reaction to dissatisfaction and failure.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“No work of art ever puts forward views. Views belong to people who are not artists.”
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