Woodrow Wilson: America's Post-Mill Presidency Part 1

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[00:01:13] Now, normally every episode, Joel and I would give you a voice from history, a sermon that was delivered. However, Joel is currently traveling, and I am in the studio alone here on my side of the world in Indonesia. And actually, Joel is in Indonesia currently traveling

[00:01:30] and doing a bunch of filming for different ministries here. And I will be honest with you. This is one of those episodes that if I could run some... If Revived Studios was run by a committee, they would look at this plan of what I put on the board,

[00:01:46] and they would have scrapped it. They would have said, Yeah, no, this is really not a good idea. And we've had a few of those. We were taking ad money from Christianity Today, but I didn't like what they stood for and some of the things they were supporting

[00:02:01] and some of the background kind of stuff and the shady part of the business, but some stuff you couldn't see. And so I canceled it. You know what? That hurt our wallets a little bit because we were making a pretty decent amount of money, especially for a podcast,

[00:02:13] especially for at the time our podcast was much smaller than we are. Another idea that probably the committee would have scrapped would have been the time I recorded five hours of history of the Christianity of Ethiopia. Sometimes there are ideas that I cannot wait to bring you,

[00:02:28] but if a committee was there, they would have looked at me and they would have said, We shouldn't do that. Thankfully, there is no committee. And the other person that helps in this project is Joel and he never goes stop. He might sometimes go, Are you sure?

[00:02:40] But he doesn't ever say stop. This episode is one of those episodes where the committee would have said, Stop. What are you doing? This is going to cause controversy. Spending an entire episode, which originally this was only designed to be one episode.

[00:02:53] Now it's going to be two episodes, a two-parter, which we've never done. We've really never done a two-parter series. There's no sermon and we're going to walk through a very touchy subject in post-millennialism. And if you were going to a committee,

[00:03:08] they would say people are going to be upset. People are not going to like what you're going to say. This is not a subject anybody even wants to talk about. And what are you doing? So why am I doing this? For starters, in modern history,

[00:03:22] Woodrow Wilson is certainly a contender for one of the most influential people in the last century that we had. It's certainly true that our world was deeply shaped by this one person. And regardless of how you feel about post-millennialism or some of the other aspects of his life,

[00:03:42] you certainly would have to say that he deeply has a story to tell. There are some good warnings and things to learn from him. Now he is actually kind of an interesting and tragic figure. Herbert Hoover said of him that he is a Greek tragedy

[00:03:58] except it didn't play out on stage, but in the lives of nations. Now that is a strong story. And I will say, part of the reason, this was an idea I had over the summer and it took me a while to get to it.

[00:04:09] This was the opportunity I had to finally put this script to the idea that I'd had since the summer. And there are some times you have ideas and it just takes a while before you can finally get them. One of those ideas was Minister to Monsters

[00:04:19] that we put out. It was two years at this point and we got an email back from somebody who said, and this is one of the most powerful testimonies that this show has ever had. When we put that episode out, I got an email two days later.

[00:04:32] The person emailed me and said, after listening to your episode about a minister who went to the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials, I now have the conviction and the strength to go back into prison ministry and face the man who raped my daughter.

[00:04:46] Now that was an email I never expected I would get or that I would hear revive thoughts as a part of something like that. Wow. There are just ideas and stories and things that we get to tell that are different. They're not always the same

[00:04:59] and they go to different places. That was probably one of the most meaningful emails I'd ever had. And it was from a story idea I'd had for years before that, where I just kept putting it off, putting off, putting off.

[00:05:08] And finally, I felt like it was the time to put it out and the Lord used it literally that week. It really was the time to put it out and I didn't know that. This is another one of those ideas that's been on my mind for a while

[00:05:20] and when Joel out of town, this seemed like a good time to go for it and run through Woodrow Wilson's life. Now, before we do, I did want to say thank you. We have a new Patreon that we wanted to support.

[00:05:30] If you are a listener to the show, you should support us on Patreon. When you get support us on Patreon, you get both revived thoughts and martyrs and missionaries ad free, which is an excellent thing. You also get access to deep dives

[00:05:42] so you can listen to the Joan of Arc story, which has never been released to the public. You can listen to an hour and a half of the Salem witch trials, which has never been released to the public. And you can also listen to our first crusade story,

[00:05:52] which has never been released to the public. At some point, they probably will be, but it will be a while. So in the meantime, you should enjoy these episodes. And you will also get earlier access to other deep dives. We're currently in the middle of writing one

[00:06:03] for the Taiping Rebellion, and we have another exciting one that's coming after that. So there's lots of good stuff. Plus, you also get access to all kinds of other things. So go check out our Patreon if you haven't. And Ben just jumped in our Patreon recently.

[00:06:15] I want to say thank you to Ben for joining us on Patreon. And thank you to Kittrick, who recently updated how much that he gave. He basically paid for the whole year all at once. That was really, really cool.

[00:06:25] We did not know you could even do that function. And so seeing somebody do that, it was a great thing to be like, oh, hey, that's really nice of you. Thank you so much for jumping in and doing that all at once.

[00:06:35] So thank you to those of you who have been supporting us. We really do appreciate all of that. One more thing. You may not know that Revive Thoughts has a merchandise store. All of the merchandise on our store is really original and different.

[00:06:47] We looked around at other podcast studios, and Elise over from Martismissionaries, my wife, really loves making good merchandise. She really didn't want us to have to merchandise like the other stores. Now it's getting cold, so it's a perfect time to get your Boniface Logging Company shirt,

[00:07:01] a little sweater, right for the season. I personally have a Charles Spurgeon Super Saiyan shirt. That's right. If you know Dragon Ball Z and you know going Super Saiyan, we have a really cool shirt of Charles Spurgeon doing that that I'm hoping will be here soon.

[00:07:14] But shipping to Indonesia does take a while. So we'll see when it gets here. If you would like to jump in on some of this, we have a special promo right now. Put Nicene into the promo code and you can get a little bit of a cheaper wear.

[00:07:25] And yeah, go buy something. Go buy something for your friends for Christmas, that kind of thing. Those holidays are coming up, and who wouldn't want it? Now back to Woodrow Wilson. Now postmillennialism has been an eschatological system that is on the rise recently.

[00:07:39] It is definitely the, you know, quote unquote hot eschatology right now. If you spend much time listening to podcasts or any time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or in different Christian groups, you've probably seen the hashtag Dat Post Mill going out there.

[00:07:51] And I know that I said that like a dork, but to be honest, it's kind of a dorky thing to rep your eschatology system. So I think we're all fine. Depending on where you come from, you need to say that well-respected or people you really like

[00:08:01] or maybe people you really don't like are really pushing this thing. And some famous names that are big on this right now are James White, Douglas Wilson, whom I don't know. Don't think he's in relation to Woodrow Wilson. Just a coincidence, maybe. Woodrow Wilson's great grandson?

[00:08:17] Probably not, but we know. I don't think so. It's a coincidence, probably. Ian Murray is another one. Lots of people right now are taking on this Post Mill eschatology. And again, some of you will hear those names. You'll go, those are great guys.

[00:08:30] Some of you will hear those names. You'll go, I don't like any of those guys. But it's a big topic right now. Now, Revive Studios, we tend to shy away from big theology debates. We're not a theology debate show. We're not a talk show.

[00:08:43] We're not those shows that have hits on that kind of stuff. That's not what we do. And to be honest, I don't think I'd be very super good at that. It's just not my style. But what we do like is church history.

[00:08:53] And one thing that really surprised me about this whole topic that I've really not seen, and by the way, we also don't really jump into politics. So jumping into a Democrat president and this issue is just jumping on to two things

[00:09:05] we normally don't go out and forward with as much. But I feel confident that we can talk about this and we'll have a good time. But one thing that's really surprised me about the crop of Post Millennials that are just hopping in there

[00:09:16] and throwing out their beliefs everywhere is that almost none of them that I have seen, and please, if you're somebody who is already getting defensive, already getting ready to write your email, don't be mad. I am not, this is not an episode.

[00:09:29] This episode was not created with the idea of like, this will show the Post Mills, get them. You know, we're gonna attack you and get rid of you. This is, I promise you, I'm not that guy. I don't have a desire to destroy your eschatology.

[00:09:43] There's nothing like that. I have a desire to tell the story of Woodrow Wilson and I think that Post Mills can learn from his story and hopefully you can grow from his story and not make his same mistakes. If this system is going to come back

[00:09:55] into the flourishing world, why don't we ask ourselves the question, has this been done before and what did it look like when it was done before? That's the question I come to. I go, okay, I see that this is on the rise.

[00:10:07] Well, what was it like the last time it was on the rise? And what's crazy to me is we had a Post Millennial President, Woodrow Wilson. He was a Calvinist Post Millennial President that would be in a lot of ways the epitome

[00:10:20] of what many of the people you would think would support. And he's this big name. He's got this, he's academic, he came from Princeton at the same time that B.B. Warfield and those guys are there. We'll talk about the differences in the Princetons

[00:10:32] but still, it seems like your guy. It seems like you'd want to point to him. But of course if you know history and you're aware of Woodrow Wilson, you're already shuddering because you know what Woodrow Wilson does. We'll talk about that in a minute too.

[00:10:47] But to me it was really interesting that nobody's wanting to claim him. Like we have a president that was Calvinist. We have a president that was Post Millennial. Now when I put this up on Twitter and I asked people if they even knew,

[00:10:58] honestly by and large most of the people who voted in the poll had never heard that Woodrow Wilson was Post Millennial. It wasn't a thing. And those who did hear weren't super excited to claim him. Many of them quickly kind of rushed to the defense

[00:11:11] of how that's a different Post Mill than the current Post Mill and how that was a social gospel or theologically liberal Post Millennialism and that's not the same kind of Post Millennialism as today. And you know what? I want to believe you.

[00:11:24] I do want to go with you and I do think there are probably big differences but one thing I would caution you, if I were to take quotes that I have been reading and I have been reading a lot of them

[00:11:34] and you will hear many, many, many quotes in this episode and the next part too. If I were to take quotes of some of Woodrow Wilson's basically founding beliefs and I were to mix them up with some of Douglas Wilson's founding beliefs

[00:11:48] and I wasn't going to tell you which Wilson I was quoting and you had to guess whether I was speaking about Woodrow and Douglas, I'm telling you it wouldn't be as easy as you think it might be and that might bother you to hear that.

[00:12:03] I'm not saying that to offend you. I'm saying that as somebody who has watched the movement that's currently happening and as somebody who just did a lot more research on Woodrow Wilson than probably is healthy, this is not something you would be able to do very easily.

[00:12:16] They have some very similar overlaps. To just throw them out and say, well those were the heretic versions, everything they did was bad but everything we currently are doing is good and pretend that they don't overlap is just not quite accurate. That doesn't mean I'm saying

[00:12:31] that everything Woodrow Wilson is doing or did is what is happening now. If it would make you feel better to say it this way, he's a shadow of what you can become in your theology and in your eschatology if you aren't careful

[00:12:47] and this is why I think this is a really important story. It's funny because I think the people who will probably be most offended are the post-millennials but I promise you this episode and this part two are not written to attack you.

[00:12:59] This is my hope that if your eschatology is successful, you do not follow in the footsteps of the person who did this before you. That is what I'm really hoping comes out of this and that you will reflect on what went wrong the first time,

[00:13:14] what do we need to make sure that we do not copy into the second movement because there's a lot more overlap I think than you would like there to be between these two Wilsons. That would probably be my goal if that's why I'm spending this time doing it.

[00:13:30] Now there may be pre, there will be pre-millennials there will be dispensationalists, there will be all millennials listening too. Maybe even some preterist type people as well and you might be listening to this and going, ha, I got him. Our job of people who are not post-millennial

[00:13:42] is not to use Woodrow Wilson as a trump card. If this episode were to go out and I start seeing people saying, you know, trump card, you have Woodrow Wilson. That's boom, we got you, that kicks you out. That's not really the goal either.

[00:13:53] I don't want to create this, you know, adding fuel to the debates and fires. My hope is that by reflecting on the fact that this has been tried before and failed will cool down some of the eschatological fighting that happens on Twitter and other places

[00:14:07] where people are so certain that their side is right. As a reminder, nobody has a perfect history. Every single eschatology group has some people that are a little wackadoo and in the post-millennial camp one of those wackadoos is Woodrow Wilson. I spent way too much time researching this

[00:14:22] but it was fascinating to me that almost nobody was talking about this really important person that you would think would be one of the first things you'd want to ask about. So let's go and start with Woodrow Wilson's early life. Woodrow Wilson is a name that you, again,

[00:14:35] have either heard of or when you hear it you shudder in fear. If you are into politics you probably know about Woodrow Wilson. Many big-name conservatives have talked about him off and on and you know about him because he did some really bad things in his presidency.

[00:14:48] We're going to cover that at the end of this first part of this episode and I'm with you. We're going to talk about it. He was not a good president for the world. He really, really damaged us in a lot of ways.

[00:15:01] It's hard to be neutral to a guy who did that kind of thing. But as much as we can be let's approach him in some neutrality. Basically talking to him almost as if he is the Christian that he says that he is. I'm not saying that he is

[00:15:19] but let's approach him because whether we like it or not he is considered by history to be one of the most Christian quote unquote presidents that we have. So let's look at that and see why. Now one thing that was extremely jarring for me

[00:15:33] was to actually see how much of his personal life was Christian. Like he, how do I say this? He didn't do the things you would expect him to do. It wasn't like he was a charlatan that ran around town telling everyone he was a Christian

[00:15:49] but back home he was rolling up Bible pages for cigarettes or something ridiculous like that. Like by all accounts everyone in his life would have told you Woodrow Wilson really cared about God. In fact one of the biggest complaints that we'll talk about later

[00:16:04] at the League of Nations is how the people around him thought he was too God oriented. This really ruffs against what I kind of like to imagine. I think we all like to imagine when we see people who are living for God

[00:16:15] we imagine that they're reading their Bible they're praying, they're walking with the Lord they have a faithful walk that's the fruit we're looking for right? And then the fruit of their ministry is good. And Wilson, he has all that going on. He's reading his Bible

[00:16:27] he's praying, he's preaching he's a very effective quote unquote minister type looking guy and yet his fruit is terrible and that just seems to run so contrary to what we would expect. Now as a young man politics was everything to Wilson. He loved John Calvin.

[00:16:46] He thought what John Calvin did in Geneva is amazing and to be honest what John Calvin did in Geneva a lot of it was amazing. He believed that his life should be I'm going to quote him his life, his goal and I quote promote the moral, intellectual

[00:16:59] and physical improvement of his fellow man by quote following the example and obeying the precepts of Christ. The consequences of this kind of worldview led to him believing that quote if you did these things here's a quote general prosperity of all classes of society would increase

[00:17:16] and finally there would be quote an increased sum of happiness and virtue. Now it's easy to look at that and go okay he has a humanistic worldview and he thinks following God is about you know helping your fellow man but be honest if a 20 year old

[00:17:29] wrote that in your Bible study while you were doing divas with him you would go that's a pretty good view that's a pretty good outlook yeah follow Christ obey him and the world will be a better place. That's I mean that's not that bad of view.

[00:17:41] It's easy to critique somebody and say perfect theology would say this or that but when we're actually discipling real people and not just brains in a book this would be something that many of us would support and would say that's a pretty good worldview to have.

[00:17:54] Wilson grew up with a Presbyterian minister as his father and his family was deeply embedded in Presbyterianism and there was a whole lot of stuff that went on with his own uncle and stuff that we'll talk about here in just a second

[00:18:05] but he was deeply raised on Scripture and the importance of following God and at the age of 20 he wrote an essay called Christ's Army he pictured that the world was in a war between good and evil and that this was playing out around us like every single day.

[00:18:19] One important note of his essay was that there was no neutral ground if I can quote this part here it says in it he spoke of the hard fought battle in the world in which the forces of evil though great would quail before they uplifted

[00:18:31] the swords of the spirit this battle would progress the army of saints ever gaining grounds under divine generalship now slowly now rapidly driving before them with irresistible force the broken ranks of the enemy end quote in his world there was no place for compromise either

[00:18:48] another quote he had was there is no middle course there is no neutrality each one must enlist either with the followers of Christ or those of Satan end quote now you're either with God or you're not everything is about that and politics in his mind was deeply embedded

[00:19:03] in that world and you can see already at the age of 20 what kind of world leader he's really shaping up to be he sees everything as a crisis being a part of Christ's army and not and again we know who Woodrow Wilson is

[00:19:15] some of you who are like I don't know what to think about that let's be honest we agree with that take don't we? we do think that the world is Christ and that we are in a sense in a world battle of good and evil

[00:19:26] and that you are either with Christ or you're not, right? like most of us would agree with that and again it's one of the things that makes this actually kind of a difficult episode to do how do I balance the fact that a lot of what he's saying

[00:19:37] in writing I would agree with with the fact that the fruit of everything he did was so bad in a lot of ways Wilson is just Ahab and Moby Dick chasing Moby Dick and he may not have started out as this horrible guy

[00:19:52] but by the end of it his own things that he's chasing end up being what destroy him and we'll see how that plays out but again don't put yourself in the shoes of a guy hearing about an evil president look, put yourself in the shoes of

[00:20:06] if I knew this guy on the street and he shared these beliefs with me would I actually disagree with him? and most of us wouldn't we'd go yeah, there's a lot of truth in what you just said there if your son wrote that down and wrote this essay

[00:20:18] you would probably not only not be mad at him but you'd probably be proud of him that at 20 your son was living for God so what goes wrong? I think one of the things that just surprises you is it's hard to find that moment if you didn't know

[00:20:32] what kind of president he was if I didn't say his name was Woodrow Wilson I just said let me tell you about a guy and I'd written this much so far you probably would like him if he was an elder at your local church sharing these ideas

[00:20:42] you would probably really respect him and there was by the way a time when Woodrow Wilson was an elder at his local church and people really did respect him they loved how he spoke they loved his world view quite frankly they enjoyed his passion and his research

[00:20:56] and they thought he was a great speaker so how come this guy is not Christianity's favorite president? why don't we look up to him? spiritually speaking he should be right and yet something about him goes terribly wrong now Wilson after being a young man

[00:21:13] he goes to John Hopkins University and was made the professor at the school and eventually he would make his way over to Princeton University his reputation as a speaker was phenomenal one article I read said that people thought he was the greatest preacher of their time

[00:21:27] now I don't agree with that but you gotta know this is the 1800s late 1800s, early 1900s this is Charles Spurgeon this is B.B. Warfield this is J. Garshon Machen this is, I mean G. Campbell Morgan this is an era of amazing speakers D.L. Moody

[00:21:46] and they're saying that of all those speakers there were people who thought Woodrow Wilson was the best that tells you he was a very good speaker if you know much about revived thoughts you know how many people we pull from this specific era if someone's saying

[00:21:59] this guy's better than them he must be really good now over time Woodrow Wilson becomes the president of Princeton University but Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary are not the same place Princeton University was founded to train ministers in the 1740s but it was under a different name

[00:22:16] at the time but in 1810 it was deemed too secular so they founded Princeton Theological Seminary but it's at the same location pretty much and technically even though they're not the same they overlap a ton for example Princeton's University's president the guy who ran Princeton University before Woodrow

[00:22:31] would then go on to be the president of Princeton Theological Seminary not long after leaving Princeton University just one overlap we will really talk more about these overlaps probably in part two just to kind of show you that these are connected sides of the same coin

[00:22:43] but just a few others under Woodrow Wilson you see that he really starts to become a full-fledged school Princeton University was kind of always the sidekick to Princeton Theological Seminary again technically not connected but very much connected but under Wilson it really takes off and starts to grow

[00:23:00] he doubles the amount of students that are in the undergrad program and really starts to take his shape now another example by the way of these two schools being connected was that they would share professors and sometimes they would swap back and forth you'd go over here

[00:23:12] you'd go over there and the professors also all knew each other they would visit each other for example J. Gresham Machen whom we've done several episodes of Revive Thoughts a lot of people love his book Christianity and Liberalism many of you look up to J. Gresham Machen

[00:23:24] but he was personal friends with Woodrow Wilson he often visited Woodrow Wilson in fact him and Woodrow Wilson go back a long, long ways the Machen family had looked after Woodrow's uncle when his uncle basically got kicked out of some of the church stuff that the Presbyterian church

[00:23:39] was a part of for believing in evolution and this had a profound effect on Wilson he actually watched his uncle fight for his beliefs and became an evolutionist and followed in that route and J. Gresham Machen was also an evolutionist at that time

[00:23:53] and honestly most of these guys were evolutionists at that time B.B. Warfield was as well now J. Gresham Machen would go on to John Hopkins University and John Hopkins University he would go to school he would go to some of Wilson's lectures while he was still there

[00:24:06] while Machen was an undergrad he was under Wilson for a time and him and Machen they stayed good friends throughout that whole time now it's important to note and this is a really important part of this Wilson and Machen are both from the South

[00:24:21] at a time when the South was very much steeped in racism Machen himself wrote a letter in the very early 1900s telling his dad that he was sorry his dad was in politics his dad had tried to pass a law that wouldn't allow black people

[00:24:32] to work alongside white people at least and the law did not pass and Machen wrote a letter to his dad being like ah I'm really sorry your law didn't pass that's kind of tough break Machen also wrote some other letters now a lot of people

[00:24:45] have wanted to point out that most of those letters were written prior to J. Gresham Machen's real conversion experience and that after his conversion experience he seemed to have a change on race that at least to a degree was better I didn't do look I didn't do

[00:25:00] a deep dive on J. Gresham Machen's race relations there's at least an argument to be made that as he developed and especially as he came to Christ he learned to appreciate and there's definitely some evidence some quotes and stuff that he really learned to appreciate you know minorities

[00:25:15] in fact one of his complaints not against Woodrow Wilson but against some of the policies of his day was that the governments were hurting minorities and that was in his Christianity and Liberalism book that like as this liberalism grows it will hurt minorities

[00:25:27] so it seems that he had a shift in perspective but again this was where Machen was from as a person this is where Wilson was from this doesn't excuse them but remember this would be the time when the Democrat party runs the South they're both from Virginia

[00:25:41] and this is something you would kind of expect them to be about but maybe not I don't think they're both from Virginia sorry Wilson was born in Virginia and he met his wife in Georgia this is kind of what they believed at the time not excusing it

[00:25:55] just explaining that Wilson and Machen didn't just wake up one day and look at somebody that was a different color than them and hate them it was something they had been raised into Wilson though took it so much further when he took over Princeton University Princeton and the

[00:26:11] Princeton University and Theological Seminary had a very long history of allowing students from other races to attend it was kind of groundbreaking work that they had been very early on had allowed their schools to let black students go to their seminaries but Wilson didn't like that

[00:26:24] he resegregated the school going back on 100 years and he was like I'm not going to let you go to that school going back on 100 years of tradition and did so successfully for the 8 years he was president of Princeton University no black students were enrolled and he saw that

[00:26:39] as a major success and a major step forward and it's important to know that he also was deeply Wilson was deeply influenced by eugenics if you don't know much about eugenics go back a year in the Revive Thoughts catalog we did an interview with the managing editor

[00:26:53] over at the Babylon Bee Joel Berry it wasn't an episode that was funny or haha but it was a story about eugenics and it was really really powerful we received so many comments from people like I didn't know that story I can't believe how much Christianity

[00:27:07] fought against that and how much science just turned a blind eye honestly eugenics is one of the first things I teach my students when I get an opportunity to because nothing lifts the scales from people's eyes faster than seeing the history of eugenics and it's very powerful

[00:27:20] it's very much built on the idea and the idea was that evolution led to certain racial led to certain races were higher than other races and according to evolution and so that the upper races the higher races which were always white people could treat other races less

[00:27:37] because they were basically animals or closer to the animal kingdom in 1890 Wilson wrote an essay called Leaders of Men in which he said applications of scientific thinking to questions of population and race and ways that make a case for public policy grounded in a preference for the strong

[00:27:53] over the weak be it the physically strong or the socially strong this kind of social Darwinism draws more on Malthus who preceded Darwin and Galton on Darwin himself and it surely informed the early eugenicists and many people who argued on various sides of the politics of these days

[00:28:10] about the strength of the species rather than the well-being of the individual in other words he believed that this should be a thing that you should be building on public policy on these kind of ideas and working towards building a eugenics that would actually support the these things

[00:28:25] he was a big proponent of helping the species and helping the species grow stronger over people Wilson also believed not only that black people were unfit racially but even as a species he thought they were for sure lower than Caucasians he believed they were just frankly less evolved

[00:28:38] than self this was popular at the time and it was popular at Princeton specifically one exception to this role was B.B. Warfield B.B. Warfield always put out the idea that the species should be more powerful and that the species should be more powerful

[00:28:51] and that the species should be more powerful he always put out the idea that he didn't think it was fair that all people should be treated equally and although he did support evolution he did not support social Darwinism and all of that stuff now again

[00:29:03] under Woodrow Wilson's leadership Princeton grew and he became famous nationally for his policies and for taking Princeton to that next level people really liked what he was about and what he was doing but the university also started to become much more liberal an example of this

[00:29:17] is right after he left 1915 the students asked to have Billy Sunday a popular evangelist that many people have heard about he was a big revivalist guy come preach but he was denied instead they invited a liberal who did not believe the Bible was inerrant at all

[00:29:31] to come and speak and he was accepted and spoke instead of the very popular Billy Sunday another thing that Wilson did at Princeton that was very successful he was oddly successful however he had two big stressors in his life and one of them was kind of unexpected

[00:29:50] and I had not heard this story but it was a secret relationship he had with a woman he had a relationship with a socialite he had met on vacation in Bermuda and it's not clear if he really had an affair at least physically there's the historians I read

[00:30:06] basically said you can't prove that he had the physical affair but you definitely can prove he had an emotional affair absolutely he had an extremely emotional back and forth with this woman he met on vacation while he was with his wife at the time but he kept

[00:30:22] the relationship going long afterwards now part of this was because there was some tension between him and his wife over this for sure and but she also was more supportive of this than you would think we'll talk about that in a second but it's important to know

[00:30:40] these guys these two people wrote letters back and forth for eight long years and they would write their letters would start with my beloved or my in a very deep level you would not write a letter to a woman speaking that way to them he basically treated her

[00:30:59] as his sounding board whenever he had ideas thoughts, theories philosophies he would write them to her in these tender loving letters in fact there's evidence that a lot of times he would start a letter to his wife go write a letter to this woman Mary

[00:31:16] her name is Mary and then go back to his wife because he was thinking about this other woman later on about a year later he will actually spend an entire month on vacation with her because he quotes run into her in Bermuda again the same exact place

[00:31:30] he ran quote ran into her and will spend an entire month on vacation with her by himself without his wife his wife will stay behind to deal with some stuff at home he needs a break he goes to Bermuda and oh and just who happens to be there

[00:31:45] Mary again and his wife and her husband was cheating on him your loved one was leaving you you'd probably be depressed but actually no it was actually much more tragic than that her brother and his wife her sister-in-law and an infant which would have been

[00:32:33] her niece or nephew died he was a professor at Princeton and they were in a carriage accident and something went wrong went over the bridge or something and all of them drowned that was pretty bad and then her other brother had basically become a professor at Princeton

[00:32:48] and he has basically a nervous breakdown and becomes completely incapacitated for a year over this so she looks over at Woodrow Wilson sees what's going on feels like she's too depressed to be there for him and is happy that he has found a diversion that's something

[00:33:03] that makes him happy something that gets him up in the morning and she's also happy because he needs a diversion because the number two thing I told you there are two big things stressing him out during the time at Princeton and the number two thing

[00:33:14] was that he had woke up and he couldn't see out of his left eye he had been so stressed out by some of the work stuff that was going on at Princeton that he suffered a pretty bad stroke now the doctors did not know it was a stroke

[00:33:28] they actually called it hardened arteries pretty much every doctor today says it was definitely a stroke especially because we know that Wilson will die basically will be completely medically incapacitated by a stroke later on but at the time they didn't know it so they called it hardened arteries

[00:33:44] and he was very stressed he was very impatient he was easily angered he was definitely struggling he was sick and so maybe his wife thought hey if writing letters to this girl is helping to get him going again that's great again I don't get that and I personally

[00:33:58] could never imagine approving my wife to do something like that but Wilson's wife Ellen she really didn't seem to mind and actually encouraged him and was like hey you should write another letter to Mary and check in on her or something so very very strange

[00:34:12] and I don't think the best thing at all but this socialite relationship was news to me I had never heard that story about him before and also was just one of those things where I'm like how do you square this with the guy who's out there

[00:34:25] saying I'm Mr. Christian I'm Mr. Lover of Jesus and everything I do is for Jesus but also I have this very awkward emotional affair now eventually Wilson got tired of the politics of Princeton and he kind of told the higher ups that he was going to be

[00:34:41] a socialite and he kind of told the higher ups of the local Democrat National Party that he wanted to run for office and the quote that I found was to be believed he basically was like hey I'm interested in being a president and I won't

[00:34:55] accept a vice president I don't know how a guy who's struggling from a stroke recovery because of stress gets the guts to then turn around and be like hey you should make me president but there was another person I think it was Warren G. Harding that I recently

[00:35:11] read about during this episode learning about some of the times and what some of the other president theological beliefs were because somebody had mentioned all of them were post-millennial and that was not true in fact I couldn't find evidence that any others were post-millennial so at least

[00:35:29] in that time frame I didn't find anything like that but I did find out I think it was Warren G. Harding went multiples of times to a no it was Herbert Hoover in a hotel going to like a Quaker therapeutic center and I was like that's weird

[00:35:46] I don't you know if we had basically an asylum because he was having breakdowns and I was like man I'm pretty sure if a guy running for president today was multiple times committed to an asylum where they did weird spiritual practices that would be like he wouldn't get

[00:36:02] elected president but that didn't happen in this case of Herbert Hoover and in the case of Woodrow Wilson he's super stressed out he's running for president the most stressful job in the world okay you know hey nothing says less stress than that now the Democrats in New Jersey

[00:36:19] at the time were not doing very well in fact the Democrat party in America outside the south was doing terribly in those days and the New Jersey race specifically they had lost the last five governor races and so they thought you know what let's try this professor

[00:36:36] everyone likes him he's popular he's corrupted by politics he's a very smart guy he speaks very very well maybe this will work he won't seem like he comes from the same Democrat machinery that all the other guys looks like he'll kind of stand out

[00:36:48] as a different kind of guy a guy who's not a part of the machine uncorrupted by politics and by the way this is almost exactly the same blueprint that president Obama used a hundred years later I'm a professor I'm not in the political machine that was at least

[00:37:00] what he told people and you know it worked well for him and it worked well for Woodrow Wilson now there was a darker reason they actually thought he might be good too they kind of figured hey this guy's not coming up from the normal political circuit

[00:37:12] he might be really easy to control because let's face it he doesn't know what he's doing and we would be the guys who created him so we could totally get whatever we want under him Wilson took the nomination he said of the nomination for the Democrats quote

[00:37:26] it came to me unsought unanimously and without pledges to anybody about anything end quote but it wasn't really unsought you did tell the Democrat National Party to nominate a new president specifically so it's like it's not as unsought as you might be pretending it is there Woodrow

[00:37:43] ah Woody now he soundly won the governor race and resigned from Princeton thereafter however if his untestedness this idea that he was kind of new on the scene of politics they thought would make him easy to influence it actually turned out to be the exact opposite

[00:37:57] he is a guy who has morals he is a guy who has his principles and he quickly turned to basically undercutting and ripping out the political machinations of the Democrat machine and the big businesses in New Jersey and they were not they were not expecting him

[00:38:10] to suddenly turn his governor power and just hack at the corruption um now this made him very popular people liked guys who come after corruption especially when they're willing to turn on their own party to get rid of corruption and this immediately made him a contender

[00:38:23] for president in 1912 at the Democrat Presidential Convention however he wasn't the front runner there was another guy who was way ahead in the early ballots ahead of him and he had been in politics a long time in fact it looked like he was going to win it but

[00:38:38] a political boss um basically threw all his power behind this guy and said you know we want this this big political machine operator kind of guy and when we say machine we don't mean like an actual you know machine of course we just mean like

[00:38:53] they run the network they run the organization they run the grassroots and one of these very influential but corrupt guys threw all his weight behind this other guy that Wilson was against but this didn't actually help him because now that other guy that Wilson was against

[00:39:06] looked very corrupt whereas Wilson who couldn't get the political machines to vote for him because he had you know gotten rid of the one in New Jersey or at least hurt the one in New Jersey he suddenly looked really pure he suddenly looked like a really good guy

[00:39:19] an electable guy he was a nice speaker he wasn't touched by corruption he had quote you know the charm of a southerner but the intellect of a wisdom and of a Princeton professor end quote that's a good vibe right and so 46 ballots into the Democrat National Convention

[00:39:36] Wilson wins the nomination that means everyone who was there voted 46 times before they won and they finally gave it to Wilson and it really looked like Wilson wasn't going to win for a very long time and then he did now the general election itself

[00:39:50] is one of the wildest in history because it is the one where if you do not know 1912 is when Theodore Roosevelt decided to run third party and after that you had the president at the time who was taffed and he was the Republican and then you have

[00:40:03] over here so you have over here Theodore Roosevelt running third party you have taffed who's running as a Republican and then you have Wilson running as a Democrat and Roosevelt really has pretty much all the same beliefs that taff does and really all

[00:40:17] a lot of the same beliefs that Wilson does they all were trying to basically grow a bigger central government to deal with the problems of the day taffed was very unpopular though he was sitting when this election is over he will only get 23% of the popular vote

[00:40:30] and only 8 of the electoral votes and there was actually another guy in this election too Eugene Debs he will run for president multiple times throughout this era but this will be the best he ever does he will get 6% of the popular vote as a socialist

[00:40:44] he will be running as a socialist in 1912 and get 6% of the popular vote this is the best that a socialist running for the socialist party ever does in American history and so this is an absolutely just wonky crazy race Theodore Roosevelt gets more votes than taffed he gets 27%

[00:41:03] of the popular vote but he does not win and he gets a lot more of the electoral votes but Wilson gets 42% and gets the leftover and he pretty much it looks on paper like he won but you remember taffed and Roosevelt are basically stealing each other's votes

[00:41:16] if you take away taffed or Roosevelt and add those votes mostly together because they were pretty similar in their platforms you would realize that actually no 49% of the votes are taffed and only 15% of them voted against Wilson again but you also have this socialist over here

[00:41:33] on the side too what a crazy election Wilson would be the first president since the Civil War and the only president or sorry the first president since the Civil War and the only president in all of American history with a PhD but he would be the first one

[00:41:47] that was a democrat that would win re-election he was the first southern president since the Civil War and he was the first one with a PhD so that's a lot of firsts there and he would also be the first one to win a first democrat to win re-election

[00:42:01] since 1832 when Andrew Jackson did it and he's also one of history's most progressive presidents by far now in a world where statues are often thrown out and many heroes are losing their halls and the places named after them Thomas Jefferson George Washington those guys are getting removed

[00:42:20] Woodrow Wilson has remained relatively unscathed and why is that? because progressives are the people that were the first people to be elected by George Washington of the progressive movement so what were his accomplishments? What did he do? Well one of the first things

[00:42:35] he did when he took office was he brought back the income tax the income tax had been out of service for 40 years people didn't like it it was put into place after the Civil War to help pay for the war and then people quickly got rid of it

[00:42:47] but not Wilson he brought it back and with that also came something else that he brought the Federal Reserve you know the Federal Reserve is not a great thing if you're not it's an institution that has not overall been great for the world and it was basically

[00:43:02] spearheaded by Wilson so we have him to thank for the income tax we have him to thank for the Federal Reserve which causes us a lot of problems to this day Wilson is also known for greatly expanding the presidential powers in many ways you don't know

[00:43:16] the names of presidents before Wilson you don't know all the ones after but you start to learn the names of presidents and people ask all the time why is it so important who we elect president why is it so important who wins the presidency

[00:43:27] well a lot of the reason it is so important is because of Woodrow Wilson what he did while he was president reshaped the world and the way that the presidency worked he absolutely grew the power of the president and began to change everything using the presidency

[00:43:40] now more as a legislative tool that creates rules and ideas and laws and executive orders and all that in a way that it just wasn't being used before so he's been a great influence on the world and he's been used before Wilson also brought eugenics

[00:43:56] directly into the limelight he was a huge fan of it remember he thought humans were created they were not created evolved differently and he began to force segregation in the federal government it worked for him at Princeton he tries it again in the federal government now those ideas

[00:44:09] where oh the blacks get one water fountain the whites get another water fountain we see those signs in your heads right when you think of those things where does that come from you can thank Woodrow Wilson for that he pushed that really hard

[00:44:21] he was already in the south but he brought it to a federal level the federal government was somewhat integrated this was not a lot of fact the federal government was where a lot of African Americans went for work because the government would hire you

[00:44:34] when no one else would but not so with Wilson he was getting rid of them and he was segregating them and pushing them away he eventually had some African American civil rights leaders kind of come up and meet with him in the White House and said like hey

[00:44:47] we got our communities to vote for you they always voted Republican and we want them to vote for you you seem like a good guy who would look out for us what happened? and Wilson argued with them and basically explained to them why it's okay

[00:44:57] for me to segregate and why I think you're wrong and they eventually he said to them at one point segregation is not humiliating it's a benefit and it ought to be regarded as a benefit by you gentlemen now imagine looking at some people who are a different

[00:45:10] skin color than you and telling them to their face this is a benefit and you should see it that way that you don't get to work alongside me and I'm like I don't care I don't get to work alongside me that's I mean that's something isn't it?

[00:45:24] that's obviously you could say it's racist of course it's racist but I mean that is just a level of commitment to your ideas and your beliefs that is beyond what most of us have that's certainly true I'm not saying that as a compliment I'm saying like

[00:45:37] he is something else shortly thereafter after telling these men that he just threw them he angrily threw them out of the White House like how dare you question me basically oh and on top of that Wilson then went on to create help recreate the KKK you see

[00:45:51] Wilson years before had written a history book for the South and he romanticized this battle between the fight of the South and the North and he deeply attacked black people as ignorant and fools and he said that there was a KKK that formed after the Civil War

[00:46:06] it was a league of almost night like people that protected the South from the evils of other people that look differently than you well his book got quoted and so the person who created the movie by the way was a friend of Wilson's from school asked

[00:46:23] it was obviously a white supremacist he created a movie and basically created like these night like people calling them the KKK and he basically took his ideas and turned them into this big romantic movie romantic in the sense of like you know oh wow that's very emotional

[00:46:38] and he asked him you know hey can you help me with this movie and promoting it and Wilson was super excited to he was like yeah absolutely and he went to the White House to screen it now the KKK you may not know this actually had been

[00:46:52] pretty much abolished and defeated in the 1870s it was gone and then it came back why? well when they screened the birth of a nation at the White House and threw their full support behind it the whole nation felt comfortable to go see that movie and people

[00:47:07] liked the movie they liked the idea of American knights fighting black people they liked the idea that this was some romantic thing that they could get behind and it justified their racism it justified their eugenics and in the 1920s the KKK got re-founded after birth of a nation

[00:47:21] became so popular and a huge reason birth of a nation was so popular is because it was screened at the White House and it was based off partially based off the book that Wilson had written I mean so when you see the KKK and all the things

[00:47:35] that happen in the KKK in the 20th century you have to look at Woodrow Wilson as partially responsible certainly as a direct inspiration for what happened it wasn't just the KKK because of all the stuff that was going on in that decade there was a series

[00:47:52] of race riots that broke out across America in fact during his tenure it was some of the worst race riots that had happened pretty much since its inception where people were getting killed people were dying but Wilson did almost nothing to stop these riots he seemed pretty disinterested

[00:48:11] in the lynchings the riots and his racism and his beliefs that people were lesser than him would come into play we'll come in actually far later but it's pretty important worth noting with the League of Nations Japan fought alongside the Allies in World War I when Wilson

[00:48:28] was pushing his League of Nations and we'll talk a lot more about the League of Nations or the Covenant of the League of Nations which is its actual name in our part two the Japanese delegation will come to Woodrow Wilson and they will say

[00:48:40] hey we'd like to add an amendment to the Covenant all races will be treated equally and the Japanese said look we fought in World War I you know that time it was not called World War I it was called the war and we fought alongside you

[00:48:53] we fought in the trenches we're all equals now let's treat each other as equals and Wilson was the head of the committee and he basically used all the power in his committee to get that idea vetoed and did not want that idea to go forward he was like

[00:49:08] no sorry I nah I don't like the League no thank you and this deeply embarrassed the Japanese they were not happy they went back and basically went back to their country and were like we didn't get treated very well at the conference we didn't get a lot of

[00:49:26] reward for losing soldiers and dying for the allies against the Germans and they basically told us we'll never be equals in their eyes so yeah we're not happy with the West in fact this is literally cited to the more extreme imperialist movement taking over Japan they said look

[00:49:48] the West will never see us as equals look what happened in 1919 so let's quit trying to show them we are equals let's take over so you can draw a pretty direct I mean not perfect but a pretty direct link between Wilson and the KKK and you can also

[00:50:05] draw a link between him and Imperial Japan again other things in his story that's not good because of the role that will play in World War II and the many millions of people who will lose their lives to Imperial Japan across the 20th century

[00:50:21] now part of the reason he looked down on Japan again goes back to his views on eugenics he believed that some races were inferior Wilson just was all about this another quote from him on eugenics during this time might be worth mentioning was it is accountable to Darwin

[00:50:38] that necessitated by task shaped by its function and its sheer pressure of life he's talking about how the government should run he says it's not a living thing with organs that offset each other off balance each other it's a living political constitution that must be Darwinian in structure

[00:50:55] society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life not a mechanics it must develop so he's saying Darwin remember his life is all about politics and God and now he's bringing another quote of his and this one is not fun to say

[00:51:09] but you need to hear this quote not my quote his quote he said there are many good mulatto citizens but it is truly indisputable that any mixture of the races makes one a mongrel and ultimately an inferior blend so mulatto are people who are not

[00:51:23] directly of European descent and he's saying yeah sure there are good people but it will make us weaker over time he does not have a high view not only that but during his administration they pushed many eugenics groups sterilization of people keeping them from having children

[00:51:40] because they would either they believed they'd be mentally handicapped or they believed that they would pollute the race was a problem one of the guys that they supported a Harvard professor at the time Katzen Ellen Bogen was such a fan of eugenics that when Germany embraced eugenics

[00:51:56] which is what the National Socialists the Nazi party did he would go over to a concentration camp and would help them perform the atrocities at the concentration camp he believed so firmly in eugenics and he would actually be tried for war crimes after World War II

[00:52:09] this was a guy Wilson supported not good very bad for the world these things that they did another policy of his is a different note but apparently he sent a 4000 person army into Mexico or at least kind of oversaw that and Mexico got really mad when 4000 American soldiers

[00:52:28] invaded the border without really any warning and literally almost brought United States and America into war in like 1913 so that was pretty crazy now to give a positive he did he did actually help give the Filipinos their own plan to self-governance they were complaining about the Americans

[00:52:48] had gotten the Philippines by accident in the Spanish American War they didn't really know what to do with it and we'll talk about what was decided there but under Wilson they decided to kind of give them back their freedoms they'd been asking for they didn't really want

[00:53:01] to be a world empire they weren't trying to give the Filipinos their freedom and he also did start giving more rights to Puerto Ricans they had been kind of treated as lesser citizens too and it began the process of giving them more of an American citizenship style

[00:53:14] it wasn't all positive but I wanted to at least say there were some things that he did that were if not great they were on the track of that good but it certainly doesn't outweigh the many many many negatives that were in his foreign policy and not just

[00:53:28] his foreign policy and domestic policy another thing that he did was he segregated the Navy the Navy was pretty much the one place in the military where there was not segregation because everybody was the same you all are all the same on the boat everyone's working together

[00:53:40] but under Wilson he created different cafeterias different bathrooms again everything was segregated so even places that had never been segregated were suddenly segregated really for the first time now if we can go back to a scandal of his back to what he was doing during his presidency

[00:53:52] his wife Ellen dies after he was killed and she was the only woman who was alive and she was the only woman who was alive and she was the only woman who was alive and so Ellen dies after eight years and he's still in a relationship

[00:54:05] with this woman this Mary Hubert woman that he had been writing letters back and forth to and being very very intimately involved with but one day this Mary Hubert woman goes and checks the newspaper she's a socialite but she's got money and she reads that surprising shocking news

[00:54:22] probably the kind of news you drop your tea almost over that Wilson who is only a year out from having lost his wife is now not very long maybe not a year but pretty quickly thereafter of having lost his wife don't quote me on that one he suddenly

[00:54:38] is engaged to another woman a woman named Edith and Mary is suddenly shocked to find and she wrote on a letter how could he do this so soon a couple days later she gets an email she gets a letter from Wilson explaining how hey you're going to hear

[00:54:56] soon that I got engaged and she's like well I'm going to hear soon that I got engaged here's what happened it was a whirlwind romance but I'm in love with Edith basically and Mary was like I was surprised and I'm surprised you didn't tell me about Edith

[00:55:10] and I can't believe that this huge thing happened and you never told me also I just looked at my notes and I realized I switched Edith and Ellen Edith was the first wife and Ellen was the second so sorry about that if you're a big Woodrow Wilson fan

[00:55:24] you've probably been yelling at your well not a fan if you know your history you're a big Woodrow Wilson fan especially if you're a big Woodrow Wilson fan after all of that stuff I just told you bad stop being a Woodrow Wilson fan he was clearly

[00:55:38] a major racist bad guy but anyway Woodrow Wilson's first wife I switched those names sorry now you see here that he that he suddenly is having this woman that he's engaged to he tells Mary hey look I'm sorry you know I love you you're my best buddy

[00:55:55] we have a deep bond that's beyond I'm getting married to this woman over here cool now he gets to go tell and Mary basically writes like I can't believe you did this I hope you're happy God knows she says something that effected like

[00:56:07] God knows how lonely I am and how much I'm gonna miss you but I can't write to you anymore not like we used to not with all this and she felt betrayed and to be honest let's be honest Mary probably had to be thinking Woodrow might come

[00:56:17] swoop her off her feet she was a widow she was a socialite they'd been you know mailing back and forth you kind of had to think that on some level there was a chance that they would get together and suddenly this other woman Ellen is in the picture

[00:56:30] and completely taking her place and you didn't even know about her you just read the newspaper one day now then Woodrow goes and tells Ellen he realizes I need to tell my my new fiance about this and Ellen takes it pretty hard understandably

[00:56:46] to find out that he had this eight year relationship with another woman and that for the eight months that they had been together him and Ellen had been together he had this other relationship he had this other relationship still going on through letters and she is pretty clear

[00:56:59] no and basically from what I read she stayed up the entire night she had this perfect picture of Woodrow as the best man ever and that romantic image of him shattered that night and she stayed up the entire night basically am I gonna break up with him

[00:57:13] am I gonna get together with him and she finally decides the next morning okay I'm gonna stay with you I loved you as this perfect idol I realize you're a human and you're fallen like everyone else I will love the human version of you too

[00:57:26] now I don't wanna be cynical but he is president of the United States you do gotta wonder if some of that was playing into it but either way she sticks with him and says we're gonna stick together but she's also like this Mary thing is done

[00:57:39] we're not doing this anymore at one point Mary will write a letter to Woodrow and be like hey I heard something's going on hope you're okay kind of thing and Ellen will be like yeah oh no it'll be like over this issue of like this issue so actually

[00:57:53] when this the election of 1960 happens the Republicans somehow find out what's going on here and they I mean this is a scandal right like this is big and so they're trying to win an election they pull this out of the hat and they're like dude

[00:58:07] he's got another wife maybe and then they even say like this other woman might be the reason his first wife died the heartbreak of not being loved because he had this other woman and this becomes a big scandal it embarrasses Mary it embarrasses Woodrow

[00:58:20] it embarrasses his new wife Ellen and Ellen so Mary writes a letter basically I've never said anything people have been asking to buy my letters from you but I haven't sold them I would never do that to you Woodrow and Ellen responds and says hey

[00:58:33] thank you so much Mary we appreciate that you wouldn't do that you know it's great that you wouldn't sell those letters but also I'm going to be responding to you from now on because I think it's best that I help out with what Woodrow is so busy

[00:58:44] and I think I'm going to be the one talking to you now so you can see that Ellen is not playing around with this Mary chick she is not on the same page as his first wife Edith letting him do whatever he wants and she's very much like

[00:58:55] no I'm the wife you're not now towards the end of his life Mary and Ellen and Woodrow would meet Woodrow would kind of go back to mailing her a little bit back and forth and they would end up meeting only a couple days before they die

[00:59:09] having lunch together so I mean it almost seems like Woodrow was trying to give it another go maybe he just felt bad about it I don't know but it's certainly quite a sad story quite a scandal and it's not even the last scandal we're going to touch on

[00:59:22] when it comes to Woodrow Wilson's love life there's another issue that we'll come up with not so much a love issue but certainly an issue between him and his wife that we will cover in part two Oy Wilson now it's important to ask the question

[00:59:39] we've been talking about Princeton so does Princeton support this? where do they land in all this right? I did so much research to find the opinions of what were the opinions of some of these theologians and people that people look up to Gerhardus Voss Jay Gresham Machen

[00:59:58] B.B. Warfield and I want to know what do these guys think of him? well, Jay Gresham Machen was a big supporter he supported him through the Democratic Governor he supported him on his way to President he did not support him when he went to World War I

[01:00:12] but that was because Jay Gresham Machen was against going to World War I but other than that he was a big supporter of his for a long time one man who I really wanted to find was B.B. Warfield I could never find anything

[01:00:24] and maybe it's out there but I could not find his thoughts he is the premier theologian of Princeton at this time and I could never find what he thought of Woodrow Wilson even though he's such an extensive writer I did however find Gerhardus Voss

[01:00:38] was a big family friend of his and they would actually interrupt and meet each other in fact, I think the first people that came to his house when he got married was the Wilson family they were personal friends of his he's a Princeton professor Cornelius Van Til

[01:00:53] will talk so highly of Voss and yet we see here that Voss was a huge supporter of Wilson's but Voss' son Bernardus will say later on that hey, dad loved Wilson they were family friends but he didn't support his politics however, was that true

[01:01:08] or was he just backtracking because people turned on his politics when he got older it's a question worth asking again, we've talked about Jay Gresham Machen he had some big issues with him being in World War I but Machen will go to the YMCA will serve soldiers

[01:01:21] on the front will be a part of World War I so even though he was against World War I he went out and supported the boys and did a whole lot there and we did a whole episode on him basically being gas attacked and some of the stuff

[01:01:33] that happened to him when he was out there Warfield wrote poetry supporting World War I and tried to encourage America to go to war so even though Warfield we don't have any actually direct quotes from Woodrow Wilson at least that I could find

[01:01:45] we do see that he had some thoughts on going to World War I so he at least agreed with that thought once they went Charles Eerdman another one professor of practical theology and his obituary mentioned that he was a notable friend of Woodrow Wilson's among some other presidents

[01:01:59] another notable connection between Princeton and Wilson was J. Ross Stevenson not a name you probably know but he was a member of the board of directors he was president of Princeton Seminary and he would go on to make Princeton more accessible to the public B.B. Warfield's brother

[01:02:12] and he would be appointed to some of these positions and Stevenson would win the vote under again the chair board being Warfield's brother I don't know that he voted for him but at least he helped him get into a position it seemed like they were

[01:02:25] all on the same page here and Stevenson was friends with Wilson in fact he actually wrote letters to Wilson asking for mentorly advice when he was running the seminary at the same time that Wilson was running the university so they were considered fairly close and when Woodrow Wilson

[01:02:40] will announce his plan Stevenson will push for a plan called the plan of union to bring the Presbyterian Church and 20 other Protestant denominations together into one quote organic church union of the Evangelical churches of America basically a league of nations for churches that would bring them all together

[01:02:59] under one umbrella merging them all together full of the flowery language of theological ideas of liberalism one more important person from this Presbyterian movement Henry Van Dyck he was a big deal in the Presbyterian Church he was involved in a lot of the conferences and councils

[01:03:12] during that time he was a Princeton University professor not a Princeton Theological Seminary professor but he was a graduate of the seminary and he was a part of the growing liberal wing and Van Dyck and J. Gresham Machen will have some big fights kind of in the

[01:03:25] church world after Wilson died so again both of these people were important and Wilson actually sent Van Dyck to be the ambassador to him of the Netherlands during that time so again just another strong church to him and he was a big part of that world

[01:03:41] where you see another person that was a part of that world that was supporting what Wilson was doing and you actually know Van Dyck probably because he wrote the song Joyful Joyful We Adore the Christmas song that many people have heard and enjoy right

[01:03:53] now the plan of union that I mentioned a little earlier was this plan to unite these churches now we do have writings from Vose, Warfield and Machen and they hate the plan of union they don't again don't have their writings necessarily on Wilson we don't see them

[01:04:08] attacking the plan of union we don't see them attacking a lot of his stuff but we do see them attacking the plan of union we found them talking about that could be they were theologians and they maybe didn't want to talk on politics

[01:04:19] but we do see some of that so they were willing to attack ideas at that time but they didn't attack Wilson and we never really see Princeton repudiate Wilson or the seminary ever really mention it now the seminary and Princeton weren't super close in fact the seminary

[01:04:32] had a centennial celebration and Wilson didn't go to it so there was a tension between the two and the seminary there was a tension between them but again remember these guys are all friends and they're all hanging out together on a pretty regular basis

[01:04:44] Vose was a really good friend of B.B. Warfield's and you know Vose was also a really good friend of Woodrow Wilson so these guys are all enmeshed together now you might be wondering why do I care about this and especially if you're not a Presbyterian

[01:04:56] or a Reformed person you're going okay so what what do I care about all these things what what does any of this matter to me I know I have a lot of people from all different theological walks and here's why I would say it matters

[01:05:07] the Christian thought leaders and academics of their day were supporting Wilson they were and all those policies that we just talked about that were really bad for the world were supported by Christians were supported by Christian leaders and many of them were basically whether they were

[01:05:23] friends of his and didn't want to say anything or they genuinely believed everything he was doing was good they let him lead Christianity right off a cliff so so so so it's a problem it's a problem it's a big problem for Christians to make

[01:06:09] but it's also a problem and one thing I thought about and I never really thought about this is we talk about fundamentalism the world is always talking about fundamentalism and these people these Christians who rejected academia they hid out from the world they created their own

[01:06:21] Christian Bible colleges they basically split off from mainstream Christianity and they get a really bad rap today don't they fundamentalists and a lot of the fundamentalists the more modern day fundamentalists certainly are strange but fundamentalists were at that time rejecting the theological liberal drift where was that theological

[01:06:35] liberal drift coming from it was coming from their seminaries the very same seminaries that are supporting people like Wilson and the average Christian on the ground looking at all that and they were saying I don't support this and when we hear so often we so often hear people

[01:06:46] I've heard I heard it when I was in seminary I've heard it for years oh why did Christians reject seminaries why did Christians reject higher academic learning we fell behind we did all these things well look at what the higher academics were doing look at what those seminaries

[01:06:57] were doing look at what those seminaries were doing and and look at what those seminaries were producing look at what the greatest theologians were allowing to happen on their watch and I can see why you would reject that and I can see

[01:07:14] why you would step away from that and go I'm not a big fan of this it's easy to look at the fundamentalists and the people who rejected higher education and say wow weren't they crazy wasn't that stupid but let's look at what caused it

[01:07:25] it seems like a lot of what caused it was Woodrow Wilson he was very educated he was the perfect encapsulation but him and his theologians and his professors many of them were going down a theological liberal drift and they were supporting racism and segregation and all these things

[01:07:39] that the average Christian was fighting against many Baptists and many Christians at the time go back and listen to our eugenics episode if you're not if you don't believe me were saying no humans are equal all races are the same like we don't need to do this guys

[01:07:53] and they were attacked and attacked and attacked by it I can see why that group would have eventually said you know what throw in the towel we're not going to work with you anymore just something I had never thought about and had never seen before

[01:08:06] but I think it makes a lot of sense to the world and why we understand it the way we do alright this is where we're going to stop our part one right now as you can see Wilson was a really bad president and we have not yet covered

[01:08:19] some of the biggest and most important parts of his life his interactions with World War I his covenant of the League of Nations which let me tell you that is Ahab chasing Moby Dick in real time and finally his fall he has a pretty hard fall

[01:08:34] right now he's president right now he's got his wife who is replacing his girlfriend letter lady and he has just pushed through so many things that he got whatever he wanted I mean he pushed through a gigantic massive progressive agenda but we're going to see him fall

[01:08:51] and his fall is not going to be pretty you'll have all that to look forward to in part two of this episode this is Troy and this is ReviveThoughts Bye!