“Shall Christ Be King of the Nation?” Ask My Great, Great, Grandmother

My longstanding interest in family history has been a rewarding and interesting endeavor. As genealogists often quip, “if you shake the family tree hard enough, the nuts will fall to the ground.” Yes, there are a few “nuts” in my family lineage (Rufus Riddlesbarger — tax dodger, inventor of birth-control devices, and all around scoundrel), and a murderer (Raymond Bernard Finch), whose notorious crime and trial in 1960-1961 became the basis for a Perry Mason episode. There are also several notables including a US Senator (Harrison Holt Riddlebarger). But I get that a post like this could quickly turn out to be the equivalent of watching someone else’s family home movies. I’ll spare you.

There is one direct ancestor on my maternal line whose story may be worth consideration. My great, great, grandmother, Jenny Bland Beauchamp [hereafter JBB] (1833-1914), was a Baptist preacher’s wife, and an author (she wrote a book on Christ’s second advent, Our Coming King in 1895, as well as an earlier book, a polemic against the Church of Christ, Maplehurst; or Campbellism not Christianity in 1867). She was a prominent prohibitionist and activist in Denton, TX. The entry about her in the on-line Handbook of Texas is remarkable. By all accounts, she was a force with which to be reckoned.

If you live in a current or former dry county in Texas, you have her to thank. According to the Handbook of Texas History,

During the final year of her presidency, Mrs. Beauchamp traveled more than 5,000 miles lecturing and organizing for temperance; by the close of her administration Texas had 1,600 WCTU members, organized into about 100 local unions. Jenny Beauchamp was elected to a fifth presidential term in 1888 but declined to serve because of ill health. Like her husband [Rev. Sylvester A. Beauchamp], she was also an active worker in the state prohibition movement in the 1880s.

What brought her to my recent attention is the current debate over Christian Nationalism. Her essay in the Union Signal of February 6, 1890, wrestled with the question “Shall Christ be King of the Nation?” and provoked a snarky critical review in the Freedom Sentinel penned under the initials A.T. J.

JBB opens with the question, “Shall Christ Be King of the Nation?” She affirms that “every loyal Christian heart must answer this question in the affirmative,” which she qualifies with a follow-up question. “But in what sense will Christ be King of the Nation?” Her explanation affirms the complexity of the question as well as that of her proposed answer.

The proud, world-renowned city of Florence, at one time, moved by the eloquence of Savonarola, actually elected Jesus Christ king of Florence. They did it by a fair count and a free vote, just as a nation would declare its allegiance to a foreign prince. They had dethroned the perfidious Medici, and, removing the shields of the King of France and the Pope of Rome, placed the name of Jesus on a tablet over the entrance into the palace. Did that make him king of Florence?

Would it make Jesus king of America to put his name on the tablet of our Constitution? Jesus himself rejects such hypocrisy, saying, “Why call ye me Lord! Lord! and do not the things I command?” We could not make him king of America by making the distinctively New Testament laws civil laws. The distinctively New Testament laws are baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, and laws in regard to church order and church officers. The laws primarily founded upon the decalogue are not distinctively New Testament laws; nor is the new commandment, “ye shall love one another,” for the Saviour tells us this is a brief compendium of the moral law. Nor can we make him king of this Nation by incorporating the morality of the gospel into our civil code. For instance, how could we convict and punish a man for what the Saviour defines the crime of adultery? The laws of Christ were made for a spiritual kingdom, and could not possibly be executed by a civil magistrate. Jesus was an obedient subject of the Hebrew commonwealth, paid his taxes, fled when the Jews would have made him a king, and refused to support his authority by the secular sword.

So far so good—the realization that Christ’s kingdom and the civil kingdom are distinct. But then things become as clear as mud.

We do not worship a dead Christ. Jesus lives and is to-day more intimately connected with the affairs of the nations than when he walked the hills of Judea. He is not here in person, but the Church is here to represent his body. He has not changed his idea in regard to secular matters, so the Church should not accept any civil authority [a Baptist distinction]. We are all agreed on that point. All nations are to be given to Christ; Jesus is going to reign over the hearts of his people through the gospel.

Reign through the gospel in our hearts? Hmm . . . How would she define the gospel? A broad definition—i.e. the Christian faith? Does the gospel include a demand for civil kingdom obedience? Her prior distinction between the two kingdoms melts away in what follows. Furthermore, she speaks of this reign as being yet future—”Jesus is going to reign.” Is she speaking of Christ’s second advent, or some sort of postmillennial scheme? That it is the latter soon becomes clear.

When men are holy, wars will cease, litigations will cease. The criminal officers will lose their occupation, for there will be no civil offenses. The secular sword will rust in its sheath. Jails and penitentiaries will stand open for want of an inmate. The judge will convene the court only to find nothing on the docket. The State, rid of the depredations of evildoers, will be free to work out her mission on a higher plane. She will expend her wealth and her energies in directing and ennobling her people—in educating the young, in improving and beautifying the public domain, in fulfilling her beneficent mission among the nations. Then our temples of justice will be converted into temples of love. The reign of love will actually supersede the reign of law. Then will Christ be the king of this Nation and the civil power, acknowledging his allegiance, will exclaim with the apostate Julian, “Oh, Gallilean, thou hast conquered!”

So, JBB suggests, there will be a time when men “are holy,” and only then will Christ be king of the nation.

So Christ will become king of this Nation, not by putting his name in the Constitution, nor by making New Testament laws the fundamental laws of the land, nor by turning court-houses into churches, nor magistrates into bishops. His reign will not come in by civil commotion. It will come silently as the dew, and gently as the blessed sunlight. “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth.” “In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.” In the councils of eternity the Father and the Son entered into a covenant called the covenant of redemption. By virtue of this covenant the Son was to make an atonement for sin by the death on the cross, in consideration to which the Father was to give him all the nations of the earth. “ Ask of me and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

So the nation that finally rejects his authority is doomed to destruction. “Be wise now therefore, oh ye kings; be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.

JBB expects that Christ will be king of the nation, not through political power, but through conversion of the masses. This is a classic “evangelical postmillennial” expectation—Christ will return to a “saved earth.” JBB’s expectation is that the gospel will go to the ends of the earth, the nations will be converted, and then Christ will be king of this nation, along with all other nations. Her focus upon world missions and evangelism is a much different species of postmillennialism (which I describe as “evangelical postmillennialism”—typical of Old Princeton) than the theonomic nationalist form which dominates American postmillennial expectations today.

Over the years, I have sought to find her book, Our Coming King, but repeatedly have come up short.[1] It is obvious that my amillennial eschatology and two-kingdom political/ethical theory are significantly different from JBB’s postmillennial eschatology and political expectations.

I am thankful that Jenny Beauchamp was a professing Christian—as are the vast majority of my ancestors. JBB may have been a sweet and kind woman and beloved by her husband and children. But as Rod Rosenbladt would say of certain people, they are “wound a little too tight to the spool.” Based on her career goals and efforts to eliminate “demon rum,” it is possible JBB might just fit that “wound too tight” temperament. Who knows?

I can imagine a very interesting discussion if we were contemporaries—about eschatology, politics, and a false biblical requirement for total abstinence from alcohol. But alas in the providence of God we live in different places, at different times, and with differing expectations for the future. I too believe the kingdom of God conquers all, but I remain confident that Babylon (the city of man) will not improve along postmillennial cultural and societal expectations. No DIY efforts to transform Babylon the Great into the City of God on earth will ever truly succeed.

Since I am not a fan of prohibition (with all of its unintended consequences), I will celebrate JBB’s legacy with an ice-cold craft beer tonight in her honor and if such things do happen, I look forward to chatting with her in eternity.

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[1] Oral Roberts University had a copy of Our Coming King in their library, but my efforts to obtain it through purchase or inter-library loan have gone unfulfilled.