Francis Wayland Quotes
I have no right, for the sake of carrying a measure, or stirring up excitement, or swaying the popular opinion, to urge, as a matter of universal obligation, what God has left as a matter to be decided by every man’s conscience
Wayland, felt slavery was immoral and against the world of God. But he sought a middle-of-the-road position to keep his religion from schism and his University Trustees from conflict. The Baptist Churches of America were split asunder by the slavery issue. Wayland, who represented both the Northern abolitionist-leaning Baptist Churches and the Southern pro slavery churches, tried to forge a middle ground whereby slavery would end by the moral enlightenment of man and his love for fellow man as opposed to by legislation or economic pressure. He successfully predicted the outcome of the conflict except for one error he made. The conflict DID end slavery. The Baptist Church finally split into southern and northern wings in 1845. To this day, the Southern Church is extremely conservative, and fundamentalist; the Northern, very liberal and modern.
Francis Wayland, 1796–1865, President of Brown University, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Providence and President of the National Convention of Baptist Churches, The Limitations of Human Responsibility, 1838
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Congress had passed the Edmunds Act prohibiting plural marriage. Taylor, who himself had 7 wives and 35 children, went “underground” and secretly operated the church from exile.
By morally subjugating the existing laws, the scriptures, public opinion to the law of nature, Spinoza distressed many of the clerics and civil authorities of the day. Spinoiza's views were so threatenting to the established religious authorities that he was the only man in history to have been excommunicated by the Jews, the Catholics and the Muslims.
This is the ethical and moral foundation of the doctrine adopted at the Nuremberg German War Crimes trials. Required obedience to an improper/illegal order is not a defense.
Francis Wayland, was an American Baptist minister, educator and economist. He was president of Brown University and pastor of the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, Rhode Island. In Washington, D.C., Wayland Seminary was established in 1867, primarily to educate former slaves, and was named in his honor. (In 1899, Wayland Seminary merged with another school to become the current Virginia Union University, at Richmond, Virginia.)
