P.T. Barnum: 7/5/1810 – 4/7/1891

March 27, 1983
Lakeland

April 1983
Port Charlotte

If you saw the performance of “Barnum” at the Civic Center a couple of weeks ago, you were treated to some aspects of the spectacular life of the great showman. I believe he would have approved the color, energy, flash, and tunefulness of that show. But there were many other sides to the character of this “Prince of Humbugs” - which he called himself. When I vent my irritation talking back to some of the overblown commercials on the TV, I should remember that Barnum may have been the one person most influential in engendering the Madison Avenue approach to public relations and huckstering of products. But there are elements of his character, beliefs, and activities, not widely known, that lead me to say with respect, and not embarrassment, that Barnum was a Universalist.

[CJW notes: unemployed bricklayer ... rubber sprgs ... Conn. Yankee]

I remember vividly when I was negotiating with the Universalist Church in Bridgeport, Conn., to become its minister, how Barnum’s influence still marked that church. After accepting the ministry, we lived in a parsonage which had been given to the church by P. T. Barnum. On the front door was a brass plaque about 12” x 12” inscribed that this was the Universalist parsonage given by P. T. Barnum. The house was a large Victorian, well-kept and painted on the outside. Inside, things were not as neat [CJW note: rather shabby]. There were two living rooms, a dining room and a kitchen on the first floor, five bedrooms on the second floor and three on the third (at the time we had two children). The house never heated well except in the summer. I never saw Jumbo, but at times, I felt rather unkindly, that Barnum had also produced a white elephant.

Then, when I first toured the church, I noted that one of the pews near the front had a brass plate, “P. T. Barnum.” So I asked, “this is the pew where Barnum sat?” Well, the answer was, at the time Barnum was here, there were no pews, the seating comprised theatre-type seats, but this pew is approximately located where Barnum used to sit. So I noted (to myself), this is Barnum’s church.

In his Bridgeport days, Barnum wrote a pamphlet, widely distributed at the time, “Why I am a Universalist.” I no longer have a copy, but have notes on it. The language is not entirely the words we would use today. He protested against doctrines and preaching that by and large do not prevail today. Most Protestant churches are no longer heavily incensed with the smell of brimstone and sulphur. The most widely-patronized preaching today seems to deal with the secrets of success, the possibilities for popularity, or solutions for inadequacy of the self.

Although Barnum’s grandfather, Phineas Taylor, had been a Universalist, P. T. was reared in an orthodox religion near Danbury, CT. There was no heat in that church, so the parishioners were called “blue-skins” by the worldly who did not go to church. In writing of his childhood, Barnum tells how he was distressed at the sights and sounds of the emotional frenzies which grasped people when the horrors of the forthcoming Hell were painted in vivid and threatening sermons. As many others of his day, Barnum sought out a more liberal religion because the old-time religion was no longer good enough for him. He found his way to Universalism and eventually became a member of the Bridgeport Universalist Church.

Although as a showman Barnum constantly used glittering exaggerations, in his Universalist pamphlet he was careful to get below the surface of shallow thinking. He plainly stated that it was not mere assent to religious generalities that was important in a person’s faith, but rather what a person believed about God, the kind of authority that Jesus represents, how and in what ways scripture is true.

It was not only disbelief in Hell that turned Barnum to Universalism but also his whole view of the attributes of the God in which he believed. With penetrating logic, Barnum declared that finite man cannot commit infinite sin, therefore, to punish a person endlessly would be unjust. God was just, not unjust, Barnum believed, writing, “As God is a just God, so nothing is ever settled until it is settled right.” Not all Universalists of that day believed all Barnum’s religious assertions. One of the most creative, but also one of the most difficult features of Unitarian Universalist religion is that no clergyman or ecclesiastical council could tell Barnum (or us) what must be believed. Barnum was not only free to hold convictions he believed to be just and true, but also (like us) he had to arrive at his own religious convictions.

Barnum arrived at his beliefs then as we invite people to find an adequate faith today. He did not believe the Bible to be the literally inspired word of God, encompassing all knowledge and revelation, closed forever to new truth. Barnum scorned trying to find a text that by itself would be the authority for any belief. [CJW note: “Much of the Bible we should burn if it was printed in an almanac or any other book.”] Rather he could, even as we can, rely upon those truths of life and history which are confirmed by our reason and our experience.

We are not Unitarian Universalists because Barnum chose this religion. Most certainly those of us who worked to achieve Unitarian Universalist merger in the fifties did not do so because Barnum recognized the basic religious unity of Universalists and Unitarians, expressed in many ways, but most notably in his choice of Dr. Robert Collyer, Unitarian minister of what is now Community Church in New York, to deliver Barnum’s funeral sermon. To commit oneself to a religion because some famous person, whether showman, shepherd, carpenter, or tentmaker claimed a certain faith is to deny the heart of liberal faith. Most of us choose Unitarian Universalism or elect to stay in it for the same reasons that led Murray, Channing, Parker, Barnum, Clara Barton, and others, to stand for Universalism or Unitarianism. Not personalities, but principles.

So reason, experience, universality, and democracy are the cluster of reasons that comprise the first of the basic positions why Barnum was a Universalist.

The second basic reason why Barnum was a Universalist was because he lived in a country where a person could worship God in the manner conscience demanded. The Universalist and Unitarian movements were born on American soil about the time of the American Revolution. As far as I know, they are among the very few, perhaps the only churches born of the American revolutionary, pioneering democratic spirit that have persisted in that tradition.

Barnum was a successful businessman as well as showman. He was also involved in civic life. He was mayor of Bridgeport, was elected to the Hartford State House and ran unsuccessfully for Congress. He became in later years devoted to the temperance movement and lectured extensively all over the country advocating this cause. He was able to achieve these tasks because he lived in a county that did not force him to pay lip-service to a state religion he did not believe; he was not forced to pay any of the educational or ecclesiastical expenses of other religions; nor were any others forced to support Universalism or Unitarianism.

So the second reason why Barnum was a Universalist is the same reason why Alfred E. Smith was a Roman Catholic, FDR an Episcopalian, Hoover a Quaker, Adlai Stevenson a Unitarian and Presbyterian, John Kennedy a Roman Catholic, and Abraham Lincoln simply was not identified with any organized religion. Each had, and all still have, the unclouded right to choose any formal religion or none in this country.

Barnum fought for rights. When still in Connecticut, [CJW note: formation of Christian Party], he wrote letters to the editor of the paper, criticizing the movement as a violation of the separation of church and state. When the editor wouldn’t print those letters, he published and edited his own paper, “The Herald of Freedom.” He was sued for libel because he called a deacon of the church a usurer for taking advantage of an orphan boy. Barnum was convicted of libel and jailed. Typically, he had the cell wall-papered and carpeted before being locked in, and continued to edit his paper from jail. There seem to be no existing copies of the “Herald of Freedom,” but the issue of December 12, 1932 is reported to have described the celebration held by Barnum’s friends and defenders of a free press upon Barnum’s release from jail.

Barnum made and lost fortunes. He died rich. He left the [Universalist Church of Bridgeport] $11,000 (a large sum in 1891) with the provision that it be invested in a way that would bring continuing income for the church. An apartment building was put at the rear of the church and the income did much to keep the church afloat during the Great Depression. Perhaps Barnum remembered that in a time of critical finances for him, he borrowed $5,000 from a Universalist minister in Philadelphia, Abel C. Thomas. It is still astonishing – I never studied the life of Abel Thomas, but it might have been well for me if I had.

Barnum played a strong role with Tufts College, Medford, which called itself the first Universalist college in the world. Barnum was a member of the first Board of Trustees (1852-57). He gave generously of money to Tufts and also gave the stuffed skin of Jumbo, the giant elephant, which was on display until the 1940s when it was destroyed in a fire. He was one of the most influential laymen in the Universalist denomination.

Barnum was a Universalist minister because the liberal faith offered him what he was seeking – high idealism and practical application of religion based on the most accurate histories and best experiences of humankind. Barnum lived in a land, our land too, where he and you and I can choose different faiths, worship together or apart, told different philosophies but nevertheless remain united in our diversity by the democratic process.

That is our history; that can be our Unitarian Universalist future unless we forget that the choice is always ours.