Christian Missionaries–Books to Read

Posted on January 23, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

I am a historian, and one of my favorite topics to write on is the Christian missionary experience in America.
I have just reissued on Amazon a book about Baptist missionaries in America, particularly in Oklahoma: “Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years.”
This is the story of Bacone College, founded as Indian University in 1880. Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma, reached out to the American Indians of Oklahoma and beyond to provide a Christian liberal arts education. The initial goal of the college was to train missionaries, but as time passed the college embrace students from dozens of tribes to provide a primary, secondary, and college education. Bacone College recently closed in its 145th year due to mismanagement and poor decision-making by administrators and trustees. But its legacy remains for those thousands the school educated over so many years. It was a school that showed that missionary work to the American Indian did not have to be brutal and heart-rending, rather a good, productive experience that many alumni looked fondly back on. The narrative is told with an emphasis on the stories of those students over the many decades: their learning, their writings, their general experiences in this small college in Creek Nation, Oklahoma. See https://www.amazon.com/dp/0977244806

Another book I’ve written, which is forthcoming in August 2026, to be published by Bloomsbury, is “American Catholics.” Beginning with North America’s contact with three imperialist powers (Spain, France, and England), this narrative account tells the story of how Catholicism became and continues to be part of the basic religious and cultural fiber of North America. The book follows a narrative chronological and thematic format, focusing on people, events, practices, social and cultural phenomena, and institutions. People discussed include the well-known, such as Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, and the not-so-well-known, such as Juniper Berthiaume and Jean Louis Berlandier.
With 32 chapters divided into 7 parts and all drawing on primary sources, this book engages with topics such as the overwhelming violence against Indigenous people and the religion’s role in wars, politics, and modern-day culture–but also, in the basic love for the American Indians that most Roman Catholic missionaries had. See https://www.amazon.com/American-Catho…
In my extensive research on missionaries, I have discovered that they were generally good people who simply wanted to introduce people to God–nothing more. An example is Daniel Little, a Protestant clergyman in 18th century Maine. Naturalist, scientist, pastor, missionary, Daniel Little became known as the “Apostle of the East” by his contemporaries and admirers for his many missionary journeys along Maine’s eastern frontier. He spent much of his life ministering to the English settlers and Indians of the Penobscot valley. See https://www.amazon.com/Apostle-East-J…
Find out a side to American history that is often portrayed negatively but rather is positive and a joy to learn about. Happy reading!

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Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe: An American Character

Posted on January 23, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Philip Marlowe, as presented in Raymond Chandler’s novels, especially The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely, presents a distinctly American character.
Marlow has a personal moral code. It does not seem to be based on anything—authority, scripture, law—besides his own experiences with life. His life as been a struggle: with success, with insubordination, with putting himself in difficult situations. He knows he will not find the truth unless he takes risks. And the truth is not a grand all-encompassing truth (at first glance) but a truth covering a specific issue in time and place. It involves someone, a nobody, being hurt. Marlowe himself is a nobody (as people keep telling him), trying to help nobodies, like war veteran and alcoholic Terry Lennox, or the dying, forgotten old man, General Sternwood, or a sleazy blackmailer who is killed, Lindsay Marriot, or other low-life’s.
Life is a priority to Marlowe. If someone’s life is taken there has been a basic crime against Marlow’s sense of morality. If someone is trying to lie, such as the authorities, he wants to find the truth. Truth, like life, is a priority. Self-respect is also part of his moral code. He is not Christian, but he clearly believes in “do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.” He wants people to treat him honestly and with respect, as he does others. He believes in hard work. He does not believe in handouts. He believes we deserve what we get—what we put into life we get back accordingly. Hard work leads to results. Laziness gets no results.
But as he lives according to his personal moral code, he struggles. With boredom, loneliness, anonymity, insufficient income—and he deals with it by self-medication with booze and cigarettes.
Sometimes his honesty gets him in trouble. No dissimulation with him. He tells it like it is and has to deal with the consequences. He wants honesty back, no matter how painful it is to hear.
Is he a representative of the American character? He has no birthright. He fights for what he can get. He is no nonsense. He believes in truth. He believes in honesty. He believes in work. He believes in minding his own business. He believes in treating others as he wants to be treated. He has an inherent sense of equality respecting the poor, racial and ethnic groups, the law, and justice. Equality applies to all—the only exceptions are the degenerate and criminal, and they still deserve justice. Justice is hard to come by; one must work for it. Do not give up. Truth, honesty, self-respect, justice, are all often out of reach. But they are still there; they still exist.
This is the moral point of view as formed by the Great Depression, World War II, and its aftermath. It is the moral point of view of 1776, the new nation, the American as Crevecoeur defined it, as DeTocqueville defined it, as Lincoln annunciated it, as Wilson expressed it in appealing to Americans, and to the world, to fight for and defend it.
Mobsters, dirty cops, politicians, the wealthy, druggies, ideologues, degenerates, any enemy, cannot get in the way of this Americanness. Marlowe fights for the America that he believes in.

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Robert Hamilton, Baptist Missionary, and the Jesus Road

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Robert Hamilton, a friend and associate of Mary P. Jayne and Joseph S. Murrow, was one of the first missionaries sent by the American Baptist Home Mission Society to western Oklahoma; Hamilton worked with the Cheyenne and Arapaho people from the 1890s to the 1920s. Hamilton, who had been ordained a Baptist missionary in 1892, was a man of tremendous drive and devotion, energy and patience, curiosity and courage. He, like other missionaries in Oklahoma before and after statehood, cared for the indigenous people, whom he considered to be like children; he was their missionary father, and indeed the Indians themselves adopted the designations of “children” and “father” when addressing him. Hamilton understood that “the Indians are by nature religious, mystical, ritualistic, reverent,” as he wrote in The Gospel Among the Red Man, a partially autobiographical account of Baptist missionary activities in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. “It is one of the evidences of the divine nature of the gospel, and of the efficiency of the Holy Spirit to ‘guide into all truth,’ that the missionary to a primitive people, with an unskilled interpreter, can get the message to them, and the resultant surprising grasp they have of divine truth.” In the manuscript account, Sketch of Work Among Cheyennes and Arapahos, Hamilton narrated in third person the scene when in 1892 he began to meet with the Cheyennes: 

These Indians had only nineteen years before quit the warpath, and were living in the midst of a people, who if they had understood them, might have been a great blessing and help to them, but who viewed them with suspicion, and only visited their camps out of curiosity or to trade with them. For these reasons, they continued to live apart from their white neighbors, practicing, in Hamilton’s view, the most disgusting of heathen customs in the name of religion. Mr. Hamilton attended an Indian burial, at which a woman cut gashes in her arms and legs for the dead, until the blood ran down to the ground. He saw women, who in their grief for their children, had cut off a joint of their fingers one after another until their hands were but stubs. 

More astonishing was the Sun Dance ceremony “at which twenty men stripped of all their clothing, danced continuously for three days and nights without food or water. . . . Others had places cut in their breasts, and a skewer put through under a muscle, and this tied to a rope which was attached to a central pole of the dance lodge. Throwing their weight upon the rope, they would dance until the muscles were torn out.” He also witnessed the Ghost Dance, “where all night long, they formed a large circle, going round and round keeping step to the weird, plaintive music as they sang their Messianic songs. He saw a woman go inside the circle and stand for more than an hour with her hands stretched out toward the north, praying most fervently, while the tears ran down her face, pleading for the coming of the Indian Messiah. Her tone and posture expressed the most intense longing. Finally exhausted, she fell in a swoon.”

Into this environment, Hamilton came preaching the Gospel, comparing himself to the Apostle Paul. Although Hamilton was vain and full of himself, he nevertheless believed wholeheartedly in the Great Commission given by Christ to His disciples. Delivering the Gospel was the sole object to him, and he and his family endured privation and the environmental extremes of western Oklahoma to succeed in this self-appointed goal. Hamilton witnessed the conflict and confusion that the Cheyennes and Arapahoes experienced over the correct path to happiness: the traditional road or the Jesus Road. He heard firsthand accounts from Indian men and women, a few of whom could speak English; for others, Hamilton relied on interpreters, such as the Cheyennes Philip Cook and Moore Vanhorn, the latter of whom was an early convert and enthusiastic Christian, despite having suffered many wrongs in his youth at the hands of white soldiers. In the manuscript pamphlet Christmas with the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Hamilton described the anguish of two women, who had been through much sorrow because of personal loss of family, including their children: “One who had lost her son said that when he died, she had been tempted to throw away the Jesus Road, and take up again her old heathen religion, but that now she could see that it was better to trust in Jesus, and that she could see that His way was right, she asked the church to forgive her for her sinful thoughts, and promised to walk in the ‘Road’ more carefully.” In the manuscript Sketch of Work Among the Cheyennes and Arapahoes, Hamilton described the personal experience of “one old man,” who “told the missionary that in the olden times it was thought an honorable thing to steal from those who were not their friends, and the man who could steal the most horses and cattle, and thus make the best feasts and presents to his people, had the greatest respect. . . . How Jesus had changed his heart from that way of doing[!] Now he had learned to love his enemies, and to do good to all men, and his life bears out his testimony.” In the same manuscript, Hamilton described how some Cheyennes, “who started in the way ‘went back and walked no more with Him’,” and began to persecute those who stayed on the Jesus Road. Such antagonists rejected Christians who were to join a delegation of the tribe going to Washington because they considered the Christian Cheyenne to be too close to the white man, and therefore influenced in the wrong way by Christianity. Moreover, “Christians were told by the Ghost Dance prophets that when the Indian Messiah came and restored the Indians and the buffalo, that all the Indians, who were found in the white man’s religion, would be destroyed with the white people.” Even so, some Ghost Dancers, such as the Arapaho, Hail, in time rejected their beliefs to follow the Jesus Road. The Plains Indian “medicine man,” however, graced with the knowledge of the mystical selection of himself to influence the powers of nature, was less inclined to renounce his pagan beliefs, and was the most formidable opponent of Indian converts. Hamilton recorded the case of a Cheyenne “medicine man” who went so far as to hex a Christian Indian couple: “this medicine man had an arrow, called the arrow of jealousy or hate. When dipped in a certain preparation known only to the fraternity, and shot in the direction of his victim, though miles away, the substance would search him out, and his destruction was certain.” Hamilton rode miles to find the couple, then told them that the medicine man’s threats were the work of Satan (Eahwo), and believers in Christ could put off Satan. “After prayer they were able to cast off the delusion, and peace of mind was restored.”

               Hamilton recounted another example of religious change among the Cheyennes of Oklahoma: “[One] old man . . . on being received for baptism, related the following touching incident. ‘The first religious act that impressed itself on my childish mind [the old man recounted], was when a small boy on my mother’s back. At that time my mother made an offering of two buffalo robes to the Great Spirit, and prayed for me, asking that I might live and grow up to be a good man. Later when I was a young man, I met a white man with a kind face and a soft voice, who told me that I ought to love and worship Jesus. He gave me this[–the old man drew] from his breast a crucifix, which he wore next his skin, under his shirt, attached to a string about his neck . . . and told me always to keep it. I have worn it over my heart ever since. I do not pray to it, but have kept it to remind me of the good man and his words. When the missionaries came to our reservation, I was glad to learn that they knew about this same Jesus. I never miss an opportunity to hear them tell about Him, and I was glad when I learned that I could be His friend and follower’.”

The Plains Indians of western Oklahoma discovered, in the words of the missionary, explanations for human behavior, for mistakes and doubts, for unhappiness and suffering. Even the fiercest warriors sought to be embraced in overwhelming love. The closest experiences to such love that tribal beliefs offered were the promises of happiness in the next life, or the benevolence of the Great Spirit, or the means by which nature nourished, clothed, and sheltered them. The Kiowa Sanco adapted the natural theology inherent in Christianity to his own experiences of delight and satisfaction when finding a pure stream of bright, crystal water, or when coming from out of the darkness of a spring thunderstorm into the broad horizon of the plains covered by the ubiquitous rays of the sun. Not only did Christianity emphasize the importance of natural history in the scheme of redemption, but one’s personal physical and spiritual experiences were known to God, who watched to see whether or not these peripatetic people would keep to the Jesus Road, eschewing all other roads as distractions of ignorance, hubris, and idleness.

For more on the Baptist missionaries of Oklahoma, see Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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Mary P. Jayne, Baptist Missionary, and the Jesus Road

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Mary P. Jayne was long-time Baptist missionary to the American Indians, particularly the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Pawnee. She dedicated her life to directing American Indians, particularly in Oklahoma, along the Jesus Road.

Jayne grew up in Iowa in the Baptist heritage, though there was no church nearby. Her parents owned “an old brown book of Indian stories. By the dim light of the oil lamp she pored over the incidents that told of the life of the Red Man, and there grew in her heart a great love for that people and a longing to see the scenes pictured in the stories.” Later teaching at a small school in Nebraska, “her path to the school . . . led her over the very ground on which Cheyennes, Arapahoes and Pawnees had fought their battles since time immemorial, and down through a wooded ravine their fallen warriors were buried. It was a daily echo of the call to take the gospel to the Indians.” She taught in Iowa from 1891 to 1893 and worked as a missionary in Chicago before attending the Baptist Missionary Training School. From 1896 to 1913, she was a missionary to the Cheyennes and Arapahoes of western Oklahoma, working with Robert Hamilton. The day she first joined Hamilton to visit the Indians, it seemed to her “like a picture from her old brown book come to life”; “she felt as if she, too, were in a story, for it was awfully hard to realize that at last her dreams of telling the story of Jesus to the Indians was a reality.” Work among the Cheyennes was difficult in part because of their poverty and anguish, and difficulty in letting go of the old ways. It required perseverance and stamina; Jayne worked among the Cheyenne and Arapaho for almost twenty years, then worked among the Pawnees and Otoes of north-central Oklahoma until 1924; during this time she also “was director of the Christian work in the Chilocco Indian School.”

In 1924 she moved to Bacone, where she became Barnett Hall matron. Her room at Barnett had a library that “is one of the most valuable in existence on Indian history and tradition. By those who know, she is accounted one of the best informed persons on Indian life and history.” Jayne was a dormitory matron for boys of Barnett Hall. According to one story, printed in the Bacone Indian in 1929, the Barnett boys were constantly sneaking about after hours, getting together to tell funny stories and laugh. “Suddenly a weird whisper comes from the lookout, ‘Miss Jayne.’ the words fairly crackle and hiss down the hall. As if by magic, the hall is empty. Boys vanish into the nearest doorways like rats into their holes. Once inside, they seek refuge in bed, behind doors, in closets and any other available places. Woe be unto the poor lad who is caught in the hall. Such a tongue-lashing as he does get!” Miss Jayne dealt with boys from numerous tribes.

Jayne retired from her work at Bacone in 1933, moving to California to try to rebuild her failing health. The traveling Red Men’s Glee Club of the College visited her in the summer 1934; homesick, she returned to Bacone in January, 1935, to live in a small two room house that was newly built by her. Immediately upon arriving, she suffered illness requiring hospitalization. She recovered to live two more years, dying January 5, 1937; she was buried in the Bacone cemetery. The funeral was in the Bacone chapel, conducted by President Weeks, with the students singing her favorite hymns. Of the pallbearers—Lewis Rhodd, Roy Gourd, Acee Blue Eagle, Jack White, Richard and Harvey West—Rhodd, Gourd, and Blue Eagle were former students, now faculty at Bacone, while the latter three “were sons of Cheyenne and Arapaho parents whom she had served in earlier years.”

She left “a considerable sum” of her savings “to the Home Mission Society for the training of Indian youth at Bacone College”; her valuable papers recounting her days as a missionary in Oklahoma were preserved in the Indian Room of the Bacone College library.

The above narrative is taken from Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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Patrick Hurley, Secretary of War under Hoover, and the Jesus Road

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Patrick Hurley was soldier during World War, Secretary of War during the Hoover administration, a lawyer for the Choctaw people, a diplomat for Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, and a philanthropist. One of the special objects of his philanthropy both materially and spiritually were the American Indian students at Bacone College.

Hurley matriculated at Indian University (Bacone College) in the early 1900s, graduating in 1905. Hurley was Caucasian, from the small coal town of Phillips in the Choctaw Nation. His father was a coal miner, an occupation that Patrick was forced to embrace when he was eleven years old. He also worked as a mule driver and cowboy before getting a chance to attend Indian University. When Pat was seventeen, he worked with two Cherokee boys “at Brush Mountain, Oklahoma, feeding cattle for a Mr. Hellinghausen.” The two boys attended Indian University; they invited Pat to accompany them to the campus to have a look. He met President Scott. “The next day,” Hurley recalled for a reporter forty-five years later, “’Father’ J. S. Murrow . . . and President Scott drove a surrey to where ‘Pat’ was branding calves. ‘Would you like to go to school?’ they asked the young man. ‘Yes, but I have no money,’ he replied.” The men nevertheless invited him to the college, where he could work to pay his tuition. “These two gentlemen literally picked me off the prairie and started me on the way to an education,” Hurley remembered. Hurley’s mother had instilled in him studious habits and the love of books, which enabled Hurley to thrive at Indian University. Fellow students saw in Hurley a dedicated worker, faith-filled man, articulate orator, and energetic leader. He was gregarious and likeable, loud and outgoing. He played the french horn in the college orchestra formed by Professor Collette. Years later, Hurley recalled one time when he had missed class while nursing a broken arm. He had to take an algebra test, and his professor, J. G. Masters, allowed the young man all afternoon and evening to complete the test. When during World War II President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked Hurley how he had acquired his abilities as a thinker and statesman, Hurley responded that Indian University, along with the study of history and religion, were the ingredients of his success.

Hurley was Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, the Baconian, in 1905, which allowed him to explore and elaborate on the many ideas he was developing and crystallizing at Indian University. In the February issue, for example, he wrote about the Bible: “There is no literature of modern times that has not been ennobled and enriched by it or has not felt its inspiration and power.” He said of good books, “that the man’s actions are those which have been produced from his reading, for the actions are only the outward manifestation of what is within.” Of Indian University, he wrote: “Our school is a body of great complexity. Each individual throbs with life and energy. In a measure each lives to himself, yet the life of the school is the resultant of the life of each individual member enrolled.” Of the prospects that Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory would combine into one state, Hurley predicted: “The new state will have all the attributes necessary to give it a high rank among the commonwealth, to insure its prosperity and in all to make it a strong factor in national politics.” Hurley’s editorial revealed  his awareness of the seminal issues involved in the problem of statehood.

After graduation Hurley studied law and made his home in Tulsa. He became the Choctaw tribal attorney. In 1914, Hurley returned to Bacone in November to help dedicate a new chapel on campus, located in Rockefeller Hall. He spoke before the students, after which Rev. Van Meigs preached, and the college chorus sang.

Since his graduation in 1905, Hurley had maintained ties with the college, sometimes supporting needy students financially, sometimes appearing on campus to speak and encourage. In 1928, he became president of the Alumni Association at the same time as he crossed the state campaigning on behalf of Herbert Hoover. In 1929, Hoover rewarded Hurley by appointing him Assistant Secretary of War. Hurley had fought in World War I, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Upon the death of Secretary of War James Good, Hoover elevated Hurley to the cabinet position. The Secretary of War returned to his alma mater in June, 1931, to deliver the commencement address. The Index-Journal of South Carolina headlined that “’Paleface’ Hurley Soon to Revisit His Indian School.” Hurley arrived in June. It was the silver, 50th anniversary, of what had been Indian University when Hurley attended. President Weeks, who had previously invited Hurley to speak at commencement, this time successfully so, admired Hurley for many reasons, one of which was his frankness and transparency. When Hurley had arrived at Oklahoma in 1928 to campaign for Hoover, he had stopped at Atoka to meet with Father Murrow. Murrow, who had helped Hurley attend Indian University, had known his mother; he told Hurley of “her gentleness, her refinement, her superiority, and her hopes for him.” Mary Kelly Hurley had died when Patrick was eleven. That evening, after his meeting with Murrow, Hurley broke down and “wept” at the hotel dinner table. “He threw aside all reserve, power and poise as he spoke of his appreciation for his mother, and of how he had tried to be true to the ideals she had cherished.” Hurley had “promised his mother on her deathbed that he would get an education and make something of himself.” Weeks wrote that “in that moment I saw the greatness of his soul as I had never seen it before.” 

The Bacone College Company of the National Guard greeted Hurley upon his arrival to the hill-top in June, 1931; a nineteen-gun salute of heavy artillery brought tears to his eyes. “Who would ever have believed thirty-five years ago when I was a penniless little charity student up there on that hill that the day would ever come when the Guard would be called out to meet me and the guns be firing on my account?” Addressing the numerous guests, including Governor W. J. Holloway, state and local officials, dozens of prestigious Bacone alumni, and the faculty, staff, and students of Bacone College, Hurley spoke of his gratitude to Samuel Murrow and J. H. Scott “for the opportunity they gave me to receive an education.” Why did they care to give him, an insignificant youth, an education? He pondered this question when Weeks asked him to consider, “why should we educate the Indians?” Weeks’ question raises “every element of the Indian problem and the relationship of the Indians to the Government and to their fellow citizens.” The Indian problem Hurley referred to involved Caucasians spending centuries trying to figure out what to do with these different people—embrace them, civilize them, or destroy them? For civilized Christians, as Bacone once said, the only option is to civilize and Christianize them—to leave them be is out of the question, partly because of the acquisitive nature of white civilization. Although of Irish ancestry, Hurley said: “I know the Indian. I know his characteristics. I was reared among the Indians. I went to school with them. I served the Choctaws for years as National Attorney. The then Principal Chief of the Choctaw Nation gave me my first opportunity for public life. I have served in the Army with many of them. I am under a debt of gratitude to the Indians. I am willing to analyze the Indian’s character as a friend who is deeply interested in their welfare.” The Indian character as Hurley understood it was agreeable, kind, calm, dignified, courageous, stoic, loyal. If so, then why would there continue to be an “Indian problem”? The “problem,” Hurley said, is as follows: the Indian does not understand private property or the “acquisitive sense of our own race.” The United States government was in error in assuming that Indians could own their land and could operate and make profitable their property without being educated in white property values. The Allotment program failed in part because Indians were not taught about personal property values. Only education can do this.”

We might “deplore” our acquisitive culture, Hurley went on, nevertheless it is reality, and to have Indians be a part of this culture, we have to educate them accordingly. “We have taught the Indian the Christian religion. We have taught him our system of government. We have taught him our manual of arms. We have taught him our code of ethics. But we have not instilled in him the attributes of our civilization pertaining to property. . . . As a race the Indian has not learned that he must be self-sustaining before he can successfully discharge the duties of citizenship.” Of course, Indians were self-sustaining in America before the coming of the Europeans. But in American society, to be a citizen—granted to Indians only seven years before in 1924—they must either own property by which to make a living or work for another who owns property by which many people earn a living; there is no other option, and the failure of many to do this made them dependent upon government.

“Why should we educate the Indian?,” Hurley asked again. “We should educate him because it is the only thing that we can now do that will make any permanent contribution to the welfare of the Indian. . . . Education will make the Indian a good citizen. It will make him self-sustaining. It will assure to him a life of service of happiness. . . . Schools have become the great levelers in America. Education eliminates class distinction.” Since Indians are now citizens, education will bring them up to par with other citizens. 

Hurley told the Class of 1931 that character is determined by common sense, courage, and work, which is the key to self-respect. “Be yourself. Do not try to act a borrowed part. If you do so, you will deceive no one but yourself.”

In March, 1936, Hurley returned to campus and spoke to students in the chapel of Rockefeller Hall. He praised Bacone College as the institution that “has furnished more idealism to Oklahoma” than any comparable institution. Changing his tune slightly from his address of 1931 celebrating the college’s fiftieth anniversary, Hurley proclaimed that because Indians lack “the acquisitive sense, the attitude that success is based on material gain,” he “is superior to the Caucasian race as a student of real art and as one capable of Christian living at its best.” Hurley said that besides his mother, Bacone was closest to his heart, for here he learned the great lessons of life, including that “the highest attribute of humanity is clean, honorable sentiment, for as a man thinketh in his soul, so is he.”

Hurley, a purple-heart recipient in World War I, in World War II was promoted from Brigadier General to Major General, sent by President Roosevelt to the Pacific theater in 1942, where he organized supply logistics from Australia to Bataan in the Philippines in a failed attempt to keep the Philippines out of Japanese hands. While in Australia he experienced the fierce Japanese air attack on Port Darwin, and was injured by shrapnel in the hand; he also survived a Japanese attack on his plane when flying over the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). He briefly served as U. S. Ambassador to New Zealand, before being sent as President Roosevelt’s personal representative to the Soviet Union. There he met with Joseph Stalin and had a chance to view Soviet troops in action fighting against the Germans. Hurley served on the U. S. diplomatic entourage at the conferences at Cairo and Tehran, where the United States, Soviet Union, Great Britain, and China met to discuss war strategy. In 1943, he also met with David Ben Gurion and the Zionists of Palestine who were pressuring the British and Americans to grant an independent state to the Israelis. Hurley was not impressed by the forceful imperialism of the British upon the Palestinians, nor by the imperialist, expansionist claims of the Soviets. His anti-imperialistic views were deepened when now Major General Hurley was sent by President Roosevelt as his personal representative to China in 1944. There he met with the Communist Mao Zedong and the Nationalist Chang Kai-Shek, who represented a divided Chinese people at civil war at the same time as they were fighting Japanese aggression. Hurley distrusted the Communists and threw his support behind the more democratic Nationalists. 

Patrick Hurley returned to Washington after his busy diplomatic activities during the war. Hurley was adamant with anyone who would listen to him that Bacone deserved the attention of donors to help it build an endowment for the future. He believed that “few if any institutions in Oklahoma or in the entire Southwest have produced stronger leaders than Bacone.” The school’s recent war record would bear him out on this claim. Hurley had tremendous admiration for the founders of the school, Bacone and Murrow. Bacone “is a Christian school that grew on a rough and turbulent frontier, and yet maintained its Christian qualities. Killing was prevalent then. Out there it was not considered such a bad thing to kill a man, until Bacone got to talking. Bacone sent men out who preached from the pulpits, ‘Thou shalt not kill’.” Sometimes love can lead to exaggeration: Hurley’s derived in part from Bacone’s seclusion, a small oasis of learning amid the Oklahoma prairie.

In the 1960s, Hurley donated funds to Bacone College to build a new President’s home, subsequently called Hurley House. He died in 1963.

The above narrative is taken from Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years, newly republished in January 2026 and available on Amazon at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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Pious Scientists in the Late Middle Ages

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Piety, the awe and respect for God and His Creation, drove philosophers and scientists throughout the Christian era beginning during the Roman Empire and continuing through the European Middle Ages—and beyond. Christian philosopher-scientists relied heavily on their Greek and Roman predecessors throughout this thousand-year period. The most important ancient scientist was the Greek Aristotle. His work as the premier scientist in Western Civilization continued for over two thousand years after his death in 322 ante christos. Part of the reason for this were the thoughts, books, and works of the philosopher-scientists of the late Middle Ages: Anselm of Canterbury, Bonaventure of Paris, Albert Magnus, and especially Thomas Aquinas.

The eleventh-century Saint and philosopher-scientist Anselm of Canterbury like all great Medieval thinkers was influenced by ancient scientist-philosophers, including the last ancient and first medieval philosopher, the theologian St. Augustine. St. Anselm’s famous dictum that God is that being “something greater than which we can conceive of nothing,” merely expanded on Augustine’s question, “if you find nothing above our reason save what is eternal and unchangeable, would you hesitate to call this God?” Anselm, trained in the Trivium, used the simple logical deduction that even the fool knows that God exists, for in denying the existence of God the fool, in recognizing the idea of God, that humans have conceived of a supernatural being, “God,” gives credence to the existence of the idea. The fool might respond, “I conceive of dragons, therefore they exist.” Anselm responds, dragons are not an entity or idea greater than which cannot be conceived, but God is. To think and to understand are the same; Anselm argued a proof for the existence of God by his words and thoughts, which to him formed his understanding. Likewise, as the Apostle John said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.”

An advance in the thinking of the commensurability of piety and science occurred in the thirteenth century in France, where there were great thinkers at the University of Paris, two of which were John of Fidanza, called Bonaventure, and Albertus Magnus. Philosopher-scientists during the late Middle Ages benefited from the work of pious Muslim scientists who were heavily influenced by works of Aristotle that survived the Fall of Rome in the eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire, the capitol of which was Constantinople. There was much interchange between Christian philosopher-scientists in Constantinople and Muslim philosopher-scientists in Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo. Aristotle’s works were translated from the Greek to Arabic, which spread throughout Muslim lands, such as in North Africa, to Spain, where his works were translated from Arabic to Latin. The Andalusian Ibn Rushd (Averroes), an Aristotelian commentator who believed that “he who studies anatomy increases his belief in God,” had a huge impact of scientists such as Albertus Magnus. Like Ibn Rushd, Albertus Magnus was an encyclopedic synthesizer of the work of Aristotle, seeing the connections between Aristotle’s scientific methods and Christian theology. He believed that the encyclopedic knowledge of Aristotle and the ancients would add to, rather than detract from, Christian piety.

There was an intellectual revolution, then, in 13th century Europe as theologians embraced the thought of the pagan empiricist Aristotle and tied it to Christianity, the thinking being that Christianity would not be the sine qua non of thought unless embraced by philosophy and science.

That Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologica, the Sum of Theology, was the logical outcome of the centuries of Christian and Muslim philosopher-scientists who slowly synthesized ancient and medieval knowledge, pagan philosophy and science and Christian theology. Aquinas’ Summa attempted to reconcile Greek philosophy and science with Christian theology. He had at his disposal a vast corpus of Aristotle’s works, making great use of them in his writing and thinking, Aquinas relied heavily on Aristotelian methods to arrive at logical proofs about the existence and nature of God and His works. The Sum of Theology was, for Thomas, devoted to approaching an understanding of God.

Many Medieval philosopher-scientists, such as Anselm, and including Thomas Aquinas, relied heavily on the Greek philosopher Plato’s arguments for a transcendent being, completely immaterial, to comprehend which required an intuitive metaphysical approach by the philosopher. Thomas embraced Aristotle’s view that human senses are the fundamental source of knowledge. Hence the body and the mind are joined to understand the nature of being. God the Creator is the first mover creating all material things, which are the effects of His creative acts. The human can study the effects to derive knowledge of the cause, even the First Cause. This was the principle Thomas used to prove the existence of God—not just by faith, but by reason and the scientific method. In this he relied on Aristotelian logic. Movement occurs from a potential to move to actual movement. How? Whatever is moved is moved by another. A mover and the moved cannot be the same. God is the First Mover. There is no such thing as eternal movement. There has to be a beginning, a First Mover. This Mover, God, exists out of His own necessity; there is no possibility of His nonexistence. He moves and causes movement by the force of necessity. All beings are more or less than compared to God; there exists a hierarchic realm of being. God is the most being. Things in nature, caused by God, act invariably toward their designed end. This is the teleologic view of Creation and existence.

To descend a bit from metaphysics to more concrete examples: Thomas asks, “Does God exist?” Yes, because movement is caused by a mover, which cannot be the same. This is “evident to the senses.” Nothing can be both “potentiality and actuality.” Fire is actually hot, while wood is potentially hot. Fire can transform wood, but then wood is no longer potential fire, but actual fire. In existence, there are different degrees. There must be something that is not just more or less but absolute. How can we say, “more hot” if there is not “hot,” the basic absolute principle? “Whatever is superior in any class,” Thomas wrote, “is the cause of all things which are in that class, just as fire, which is hottest of all, is the cause of whatever is hot.”

Now combining science and philosophy with theology: All movement derives from the First Mover, God. This movement is directed by His providence. Thus all human intellect is moved or acts ultimately because it is derived from God. The human intellect knows only what God bestows on it; anything more comes from Grace. Nevertheless, humans have free will. Human judgment to act is not just instinct, “but some act of comparison in reason.” By free will humans erred, but after The Fall, some Good still prevailed in humans, which is the basis for humans continually striving for the ultimate Good. Human will reaches a point, however, where Grace alone is necessary for The Good.

Much of the thought of the thirteenth century, including the thought of Thomas Aquinas, was involved in reconciling the different philosophical traditions of Plato and Aristotle. Thomas was clearly influenced by both. In his study and use of Aristotle, he saw what Aristotle saw, that Plato’s deduction alone is insufficient, but must include inductive analysis, which is to start at the basics and from there arrive at the pinnacle of human thought. Induction is a step toward modern empirical science. Thomas as a scientist, achieving vast knowledge, always realized that human reason is insufficient to know, to comprehend God and His Ways. Piety alone remained at the end of his inquiries.

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books

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Early Medieval Pious Scientists

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

The Fall of Rome had a profound effect on learning and knowledge. After the fifth century A.D. those who were concerned with philosophy, which at this time included science, scrambled to keep track of the great books of the Greco-Roman past. Most of the philosophers and scientists of the several centuries after the Fall of Rome were commentators, especially on Aristotle, and encyclopedists, preserving the information of the past. A few of these thinkers stand out, especially Boethius, John Scotus Eriugena, and Isidore of Seville. Early Medieval scientists like their forebears (such as Philo Judaeus), approached their scientific and philosophic labors looking into God’s creation with piety.

Early Medieval philosophers, including scientists and theologians, relied heavily on their Greek and Latin predecessors but provided advancements in the understanding of the Greek Logos, the Trivium and the Quadrivium, and Aristotelian thought. Boethius was a Greek philosopher living in the Latin West who was heavily influenced by Christian thinkers such as Augustine and pagan thinkers such as Aristotle. Like most ancient thinkers, Boethius believed that there is an ultimate supernatural cause for all things, which follow an inherent law; nothing is random. He therefore agreed with the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of an ultimate being or logos. He was especially influenced by the thinking of St. Augustine in his understanding of divine foreknowledge and free will, arguing that God is the creator of time, is beyond time, and therefore exists in the singular moment, able to see all events—past, present, and future—simultaneously. Before he was falsely executed for treason by the Gothic king Theodoric, Boetius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, and planned an extensive commentary on Aristotle, of which he completed part. He studied physics, astronomy, and mathematics.

John Scotus Eriugena was a philosopher, scientist, and theologian who was active in the ninth -century Carolingian Empire. He believed, in such works as On the Division of Nature, that faith in God is insufficient without reason, meaning the philosophy of, especially, Aristotle and Plato. He believed wholly that Christ the Logos fulfilled ancient philosophy and science: the Logos is the Creative Word through which all things come to be, and they can be understood only through faith informed through philosophy and science. Eriugena argued that the Creation is divided into five components: “a nature which creates but is not created; . . . a nature which creates and is created; . . .  a nature which is created and does not create; . . . a nature which neither creates nor is created. . . . The fifth and last division is that of man into masculine and feminine. In him, namely in man, all visible and invisible creatures were constituted.”* He believed in the Chain of Being, that God made all things possible, which never change; humans are midway between the spiritual and corporeal realms, therefore by having a body and soul represent all things.

Isidore of Seville the early seventh-century (Orthodox) Bishop of Seville was a Christian philosopher-scientist who declared that “philosophy is the knowledge of things human and divine.” Isidore put together a massive collection of writing, mostly derived from ancient philosophers and scientists, titled Etymologies, arguing that “a knowledge of etymology is often necessary in interpretation, for, when you see whence a name has come, you grasp its force more quickly. For every consideration of a thing is clearer when its etymology is known.” Believing therefore that proper nomenclature is the basis for identifying, hence coming to understand, all things, he set forth to acquire as much knowledge as he could. He was an encyclopedist at heart, a collector and commentator, especially fueled by Aristotle as well as other encyclopedic minds such as the Roman first century anno domini scientist the Elder Pliny as well as the Roman first century Ante Christos compiler Marcus Terentius Varro.

The work of the polymath Isidore had a lasting impact on human history, even to today, because he was one of the creators and promoters of the Trivium and Quadrivium of the ancient and medieval liberal arts. The Trivium—Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic—and the Quadrivium—Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy—were the bases of ancient and medieval thought, science, and education, as they continue to be the building blocks of modern educational practice. Grammar to Isidore was the study of language—Greek, Latin, Hebrew—because of which the scientist gains a working knowledge on how to proceed with analysis. Rhetoric is the expression of such knowledge so to impart it to others. Logic, or philosophy, focused on Aristotle’s dialectical methods. “Dialectic,” Isidore wrote, “is the discipline elaborated with a view of ascertaining the causes of things.” He proclaimed that “natural philosophy is the name given when the nature of each and every thing is discussed, since nothing arises contrary to nature in life, but each thing is assigned to those uses for which it was purposed by the Creator.” Arithmetic, Isidore believed, “is the science of numbers,” that is, to name and count a thing or things is the beginning of knowledge of said things. Geometry relies upon numbers to provide units of measure in spatial relationships, especially respecting distances on Earth. Music as a philosophy and science according to Isidore derived from the work of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras as understood by Plato, that a harmonic “proportion exists in the universe, being constituted by the revolving circles” of the heavenly bodies. The harmonies of “the microcosm” in life and nature have “such great power than man does not exist without harmony.” Astronomy was Isidore’s catch-all phrase for physical science, the understanding of which relies on Logic, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Music. Astronomy encompassed his geocentric understanding of the motions of the planets (the wanderers in Greek) in perfect spherical orbits; the science of geodesy, the shape and divisions of the earth—regions of heat and coolness; and astrology, of which Isidore was suspicious, not because it seemed an imperfect science, rather because he believed it was associated with demonology.

Isidore was also a commentator on medicine, especially the work of the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen, believing fully in the four humours—phlegm, blood, black bile, yellow bile—and how disease and illness result from the humours being out of balance. He connected the four humours with the four elements of the Greeks—earth, air, fire, and water: “each humor imitates its element: blood, air; bile, fire; black bile, earth; phlegm, water.” He also argued in Etymologies that the human “body is made up of the four elements. For earth is in the flesh; air in the breath; moisture in the blood; fire in the vital heat.”^ Physicians, he concluded, must be trained in the Trivium and Quadrivium to practice their art well.

Early Medieval European philosophy as exemplified by Boethius, Eriugena, and Isidore was an important transitional period, a bridge between the great scientific and philosophic discoveries of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews and the early modern age when the Scientific Revolution occurred. Another transitional figure was Thomas Aquinas, who relied heavily on early Medieval philosophers because of their focus on the Logos, Aristotle, and the Trivium and Quadrivium. When we examine the work of Isidore, we realize that much of what he wrote was absurd: yet in its overall scope, the combination of ancient philosophy and science with Christian theology and his realization that scientific practice and thought are pious activities, his work was essential in the future realization that understanding Nature without understanding its Creator is similarly absurd.

* Translated Wolter: Wippel, John, and Allan Wolter, eds. Medieval Philosophy. (New York: Free Press, 1969).

^ Translated Ernest Brehaut, An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages: Isidore of Seville (New York: Columbia University, 1912).

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books

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Philo Judaeus the Pious Scientist

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Ancient thinkers–philosophers and scientists–of the Mediterranean world knew that wisdom is a universal that transcends individual knowing, an awareness of truth that transcends the individual existence of each person. The Old Testament and New Testament imply that the Creation has this awareness of God’s glory, the truth that is present in all Creation. In his Gospel, John referred to it as logos. Logos was an ancient Greek philosophical construct that united the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, the Platonists and the Stoics. Ancient Hebrew thinkers as well believed in the logos, as the works of Philo Judaeus attest.

It is through this awareness of the logos, God’s word present at the Creation, that Greek, Roman, and Hebrew philosopher-scientists in the centuries before Christ had a deep sense of piety when observing and seeking to understand the Creation. Philo was a contemporary of Jesus, a Pharisee, an intellectual who lived in Alexandria. His Works provide us with the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of his belief that all thoughtful endeavors to understand the universe are pious responses to the glory of God’s Creation. His thinking is profound, as in this statement, from On a Contemplative Life: God “is superior to the good, and more simple than the one, and more ancient than the unit.” In this Philo revealed that he was a student of the works of Plato, that he anticipated the philosophy of the Neoplatonists and their founder Plotinus. and that he knew the mathematics of Euclid. Philo wrote further that “The elements are inanimate matter, and immovable by any power of their own, being subjected to the operator on them to receive from him every kind of shape or distinctive quality which he chooses to give them.” This was precisely the teaching of the Greeks in their understanding of the universe and how the inanimate is formed by the mind of God. He was also influenced by the Greeks in his belief that Moses had been educated in Egyptian philosophy, and through him the Greeks learned of Egyptian philosophical concepts, which resulted in the earliest philosophical and scientific work of, for example, Thales of Miletus. Such was Philo’s faith in God’s Creation that he said simply, God creates not over time but “at once, not merely by uttering a command, but by even thinking of it.” Those who deny this truth, he wrote, deny the source of piety, that God is the Creator and Caregiver.

Anyone who has studied that New Testament knows that the Pharisees and Sadducees were superb if inflexible intellectuals. There was a large contingent of Jewish thinkers in Alexandria after its founding by Alexander at the end of the fourth century BC. These thinkers had studied in depth ancient philosophy and science, particularly that of the Greeks, as the production of the Septuagint suggests. A contemporary of Philo Judaeus was the author of the Old Testament book Wisdom. This unknown Jew probably lived in Alexandria at the end of the first century, BC; hence he provided an additional source to Philo to understand the Jewish approach to science and philosophy. Speaking as Solomon, the unknown writer of Wisdom proclaims: “For both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts. For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars, the natures of animals and the tempers of wild beasts, the powers of spirits and the reasonings of men, the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots; I learned both what is secret and what is manifest, for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.” This is a succinct summary of Greek science, as represented by the works of Aristotle; for the author of Wisdom proclaims knowledge of epistemology, chemistry and physics, the nature of time, astronomy, zoology, botany, biology, and the knowledge of the transcendent. This knowledge, he claims, is due to God, who provides humans with wisdom, hence eliciting from humans praise and piety.

The other books of the Old Testament, and the New Testament as well, confirm that the many authors of these writings were cognizant of the latest in philosophy and science in the ancient world. Genesis chapter one can easily convince most observers that the myth that Moses brought knowledge to the Greek philosophers has a kernel of truth, especially since the description of the origins of the universe in Genesis is just as sophisticated as those of the great intellectuals among the Greeks, Pythagoras, Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Philo recognized this when he used Biblical and Greek philosophical ideas to describe the Creator: “the active cause is the intellect of the universe, thoroughly unadulterated and thoroughly unmixed, superior to virtue and superior to science, superior even to abstract good or abstract beauty.” Likewise, the Hellenistic author of the Book of Sirach wrote of physicians in the same manner as Greco-Roman writers on medicine: “Honor the physician with the honor due him, according to your need of him, for the Lord created him; for healing comes from the Most High, and he will receive a gift from the king. The skill of the physician lifts up his head, and in the presence of great men he is admired. The Lord created medicines from the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them. Was not water made sweet with a tree in order that his power might be known? And he gave skill to men that he might be glorified in his marvelous works. By them he heals and takes away pain; the pharmacist makes of them a compound. His works will never be finished; and from him health is upon the face of the earth.” Pious physicians “pray to the Lord that he should grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.”

One of the great achievements of the Greeks was in their understanding of human behavior, the human mind, even what we would call the subconscious mind. The portrait of human behavior is what makes Homer’s works so wonderful. The first century essayist and historian Plutarch recognized this and eulogized Homer’s ability to portray the human psyche as well as the psyche of the world soul. Philo, also, made use of Greek philosophy in his attempts at psychology, writing that human psyches, or souls “are under the mastery of terrible and almost incurable diseases, which pleasures and appetites, fears and griefs, and covetousness, and follies, and injustice, and all the rest of the innumerable multitude of other passions and vices, have inflicted upon them.” Human mental woe is not the product of demons, nor spirits, nor gods, just human sin. Humans bring it on themselves, he argued, just as the greatest psychological portrait of human beings, the Psalms, portrayed time and again. The Psalmist provided such accurate psychological portrayals of humans, their angst and wandering ways, their dependence upon God, their extreme piety even as they fell short in their actions: “O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.”

Psychologists today would do well to combine such piety as portrayed in the Psalms with their analyses and diagnoses, hence providing the most accurate assessment of what plagues human minds. Likewise the ancient Greeks would tell us, and Philo Judaeus as well, that any kind of science—social, behavioral, physical, biological, mathematical—done without reference to the Creative Mind, the Logos, is folly indeed.

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books

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Piety and Science

Posted on January 21, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

Records of the human quest for knowledge have existed for four to five thousand years, revealing that as humans have confronted the vastness of the cosmos, as they have watched and listened and felt the natural environment, their response has been an awe, a wonderment, a sensation of the grandeur of the creation, feelings and sensations and thoughts captured by the word piety. For thousands of years and even today nature has captivated humans as an overwhelming entity of mystery that dwarfs any one of us, generating a pious response, demanding reverence, humility, dedication to protect, faith in its continuation. 

Until only recently in the history of civilization, scientific and religious thought were complementary not contradictory. Scientists prior to the modern age were convinced that their research into nature shed light on the divine. The most valid response to God the Creator was a pious attempt to understand His Creation. Implicit in the piety of thinkers was an awareness of the profundity of existence, of life, and the role of the Creator in making and sustaining life.  Not all of these thinkers had the same view about life, but they all respected and had piety toward life in many, if not all, of its forms. 

Examples are many of great thinkers of the past who brought piety to their scientific inquiries. The ancient Greek thinkers Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were pious philosophers, and since until the Scientific Revolution of the past three to four hundred years philosophers and scientists were one in the same, these thinkers were pious scientists. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle embraced Anaxagoras’ conception of a spiritual, nonmaterial being that creates what is good, what is justice, what is beauty, all that is. Socrates and Plato were more philosophers than scientists, yet they believed that to understand what they called the ideal forms, especially the Good, thinkers must engage in years of what today we would call the liberal arts:  Plato’s student Aristotle embraced these ideas but with a more empirical approach than his teachers. Aristotle utilized experimentation, observation, data collection, analysis, induction, and deduction in books such as Metaphysics and Physics, in which he understood the basis of reality to be an incorporeal transcendent being that, by studying creation in all its forms, the scientist could come to know and understand. Aristotle’s impact on subsequent thinkers was immense: the Hellenistic Age, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Science. During the Hellenistic Age (330-30 BC), Hebrew thinkers were heavily influenced by Greek scientific philosophers. For example, Philo of Alexandria brought his piety to bear in some of the great questions facing students of nature. After the Fall of Rome in the Middle Ages, pious scientists such as the late Roman philosopher Boethius, the Spanish encyclopedist Isidore of Seville, the Carolingian philosopher-scientist John Scotus Eriugena, the English philosopher Anselm of Canterbury, the Franciscan philosopher Bonaventure, the Parisian professor Albert Magnus, the Italian-French scientist-philosopher Thomas Aquinas, and the English Franciscan William of Occam intermixed classical inquiries with Christian faith seeking a pious understanding of God the Creator. One of the founders of the Scientific Revolution in Europe, Nicholas Copernicus, brought his pious understanding of the cosmos to bear in arguing for the heliocentric universe. Michel de Montaigne, the French Catholic aristocrat, and Raymond Sebonde, the Spanish Catholic philosopher/scientist, continued to bring the new thinking of the Renaissance to answer old questions about Elder Scripture, the Creation of the world predating Christian Scripture. As the New Science focusing on the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo began to preoccupy European scientists, even skeptics such as Rene Descartes still dutifully practiced his Catholic faith and Blaise Pascal asked some of the most penetrating questions about life, nature, and God. By the nineteenth century, while many scientists began to abandon their Christian faith, others, such as the French-Mexican scientist Jean Louis Berlandier, embraced piety in all of his scientific inquiries. By the time of the twentieth century, human knowledge, creativity, and technology were eclipsing the millennia-long relationship between piety and science. Even George Lemaître, the astronomer-priest, suggested the idea of the Big Bang, the instantaneous beginning of the universe billions of years earlier, without reference to God’s role as the Creator.

As long as humans felt dependent upon nature, hence upon nature’s Creator, piety reigned in thought, culture, society, and science. But when, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, humans began to discover that they could develop machines that overwhelmed the apparent limits imposed on living things by nature and its Creator, humans began to develop a hubris that limited the once long-held piety. Humans came to understand the way nature works, using this understanding to build machines to control nature, even to destroy it. Human creations, human the creator, overwhelmed God’s creation, God the Creator. Some humans even went so far as to eliminate the creator from all inquiry, to assume that what is, has always been, that it is the result of chance, and that humans, godlike, are the masters of nature rather than its servants and dependents. As Henry Adams succinctly expressed in his autobiography Education, the artificially-divine electric motor, the Dynamo, replaced in the temples of worship the sublime god of nature, which he called, with religious and naturalistic symbolism, the Virgin.

Cultural and social influences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to a reconsideration of a divine role in the creation of the universe that is revealed by His works, and more of a general anonymous sense of a great mystery in the universe that could or could not be divine. Indeed, there was a slow conversion from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries from a providential to a more deistic God then to a more distant perhaps supernatural force that has some sort of a role in the vastness and complexity of the universe, and finally to pure agnosticism and atheism doubting any kind of supernatural agency at work in the universe.  Piety changes during this time from a clear sense of a personal God–in the West the Christian God–to a more generic sense of a Creator God to a more amorphous mysterious presence to nothingness.

The drivers of this paradigmic change away from piety were inside and outside of science. Those inside were new discoveries in physics, chemistry, geology, and biology as well as the development of the professionalization and institutionalization of science with associations/organizations and universities. Those outside were war, industrialization, mechanization, disease, and the modern mentality, the change from a traditional to modern society, as well as the broadening education of the public because of the growth of universities; increasing awareness of human diversity and equality; and forms of communication that spread knowledge and excited speculation. 

Modernity has denied the course of history, in which humans since the beginning of civilization have watched the cosmos and sensed continuity, purpose, thought—the act of Creation. Some thinkers conceived of infinity and eternity in the cosmos; others believed there must be a beginning, imitating life, and like life, there must be an act of creation, a Creator, a being so beyond human conception as to yield astonishment, bewilderment, excitement, and a consequent thirst to know. Ancient thinkers asked: whence does the Cosmos derive? What is the Creator? Can the examination of the Creation reveal the mind and purpose of the Creator?  Throughout time pious scientists such as Aristotle, in his search for knowledge, sought, in Pope Benedict XVI’s words in the encyclical Deus Caritas Est, love, agape: “the divine power that Aristotle at the height of Greek philosophy sought to grasp through reflection, is indeed for every being an object of desire and love– and as the object of love this divinity moves the world.”

Aristotle’s encyclopedic understanding of the Creation inspired thinkers for well over a thousand years. Philosopher/scientists of the later Roman Empire, the Christian and Muslim thinkers of the Middle Ages, those bringing a rebirth to thought and culture during the Renaissance, and subsequent thinkers of the European Scientific Revolution and beyond, were beholden to Aristotle, and before him Plato, Socrates, Anaxagoras, and others of the ancient Milesian School, in their pious attempts to understand the Creation, and through it God.

How in the space of a little more than a century could scientific thinkers go from the natural theology of Edward Hitchcock, author of The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences, to the nihilism of Richard Dawkin’s The Blind Watchmaker? There has been a revolutionary shift in the understanding of the origins of the universe, hence the origins of life itself, and the origin of the purpose and meaning of life, during the past one hundred and fifty years. The drivers of this paradigm shift from piety to nihilism are both inside and outside of science. But where do our existential and metaphysical questions lead us to today? What are the consequences of our modern way of thinking, which is distinct from every other era of human thought? Through this series on piety and science, we aim to explore the human understanding of God inextricably tied to scientific thought, exhibiting the proper role of piety within our understanding of the universe.

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books

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Jack Kilpatrick’s Vision of Bacone College

Posted on January 15, 2026 by theamericanplutarch

One of the more famous Bacone alumni was Jack Kilpatrick, a Cherokee, who graduated from Bacone Junior College in 1935. Kilpatrick was a member of the men’s vocal ensemble the Singing Redmen and he was Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper, the Bacone Indian. After graduating from Bacone, Kilpatrick attended the University of Redlands in California before returning to Oklahoma, where in the 1930s he worked with the Works Progress Administration. He was an excellent pianist and composer, who composed such noteworthy works as “The Cherokee Suite”.

In 1940, when Benjamin Weeks was President of Bacone, Kilpatrick wrote Weeks a letter in which he described the impact that the college had on his life. The Bacone Indian published the letter in November, 1941. “I have been called an Indian composer,” Kilpatrick wrote, “dealing with the folk music of a race that is, according to popular belief, essentially pagan; yet my music has been described as having a persistent Christian undertone. Is there a deep and complete contradiction in that?” Not for a Bacone alumnus. Students, such as Indians, sometimes come to Bacone feeling inferior, but leave it changed, with a new sense of the value of themselves and their heritage. “Bacone taught them that Indians were a peculiar people, bearing strange but beautiful gifts, and that in whatsoever is lovely and of good report . . . no race has a more precious heritage. Bacone taught them that talent, intelligence, and character know no racial divisions. . . . Bacone taught them to hold fast to that which was good in their own culture.”

“In moments of discouragement and deep anxiety,” Kilpatrick continued, “I have recalled to mind the singing of the birds in the quiet groves of Bacone. I have brought back also the scene of the winking lights in the valley shining up through the fog of twilight at my vantage point on Bacone’s hill top. If here, indeed, was not peace, I do not know the meaning of the word: not mere cessation of physical activity, but a mood founded on the only sure Rock that we know.” Kilpatrick concluded, “I think that this resolves the question of why I write the type of music I do. I think this will make one understand why a student does not usually go to Bacone but that he takes it with him forever.”

For more on Kilpatrick and Bacone College, see my book, Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Ages, found at Marking the Jesus Road: Bacone College through the Years: Lawson, Dr. Russell Matthew: 9780977244805: Amazon.com: Books

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