Woodrow Wilson, Methodism, Presbyerianism & Staunton, Virginia

Part of Sunday I spent in charming Staunton, Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley, known as the birthplace of Woodrow Wilson. I walked from the Stonewall Jackson Hotel to the old United Methodist church in downtown Staunton. The worship was robust and orthodox, led by a Korean-American pastor, who reminded me that we had met 10 years ago when he was a delegate to United Methodism’s Southeast Jurisdictional Conference. He and his wife were very gracious, as was the congregation, many of whom went out of their way to greet me. The sermon was Gospel-focused, and the pastor led us in The Nicene Creed. My schedule precluded remaining for the spaghetti dinner afterwards. An usher smilingly told me that like many Methodist congregations, they are frequent hosts of good meals. Visiting was an enjoyable reminder that for all United Methodism’s theological upheaval, faithful worship can be found in many local churches, which I almost unfailingly find on my travels.

After church I walked to the Woodrow Wilson Library and Museum next to the old Presbyterian manse where Wilson was born when his father was Staunton’s Presbyterian pastor just before the Civil War. Wilson was himself a lifelong Presbyterian. Some say he was a theological modernist who de-emphasized religion in Princeton University’s curriculum when that school’s president. Others say he was an unbinding Calvinist who tried to remake the world according to his faith’s precepts. The museum notes his support for Christian missionaries in Asia during his presidency, and the appointment of many missionaries and their offspring to diplomatic posts. His Secretary of State was a zealous Presbyterian, William Jennings Bryan. Both Wilson and Bryan equated Christianity’s spread with democracy’s global growth.

Wilson was the last president to address Methodist governing conventions. Methodism was at its peak of political influence during his presidency, as the Prohibition movement accelerated. Many Methodists identified with Wilson’s crusading, faith-inspired progressivism. Methodism backed his entry into World War I and his failed push for the League of Nations. One of Wilson’s close advisors was Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels, a devout and prominent Methodist, who also arranged a White House viewing of the film Birth of a Nation, which glorified the Ku Klux Klan. Daniels later resisted the Klan’s resurgence, which the film helped ignite.

As the museum admits, Wilson’s administration sadly re-segregated the federal workforce. Progressives of that era, including Daniels, Wilson and Bryan, saw segregation, which supposedly offered “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites, as an enlightened alternative to racial anarchy and violence. As one cartoon from a black newspaper displayed in the museum makes clear, disenfranchised blacks hardly saw segregation as enlightened. The museum notes that one of Wilson’s grandsons became dean of National Cathedral in the 1960s, where he was an activist for Civil Rights and against the Vietnam War.

Staunton, like many historic towns throughout Virginia, illustrates the glory, irony and tragedy of human history, which would cause despair but for Providence and divine redemption.