The Most Influential Family in America with Obbie Tyler Todd

Life and Books and Everything — Clearly Reformed

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The Most Influential Family in America with Obbie Tyler Todd

February 13, 2025

Life and Books and EverythingClearly Reformed

Before the Bushes or Clintons, before the Kennedy or Kardashians, there were the Beechers—a sprawling family of preachers, suffragists, abolitionists, and moral crusaders that defined (and exemplified) America as much as any single family in the nineteenth century. Join Kevin as he interviews Obbie Tyler Todd, a pastor and professor, about his new biography of the Beechers (LSU Press). From patriarch, Lyman Beecher, to the famous novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe, to the most famous pastor of his age, Henry Ward Beecher, this episode explores the crazy and controversial life of Lyman Beecher, his three wives (not at the same time), and their thirteen children.

Chapters:

0:00 Sponsors

2:00 Introductions

5:37 The Beecher Family and Moral Influence

10:45 Three Themes of the Beecher Family

21:36 Beecherism and Controversy

28:07 The Fate of the Nation and Presbyterianism

36:49 Other Beeches

50:38 Harriet Beecher Stowe

54:43 Henry Ward Beecher

1:09:11 The Beecher Legacy

Books & Everything:

Be Thou My Vision: A Liturgy for Daily Worship

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

GPTS Midweeker

Master of Arts in Theological Studies

The Beechers: America's Most Influential Family

Transcript

This episode of LBE is brought to you in part by Crossway. Grateful for many, many Crossway books. In particular, we want to remind our listeners of Johnny Gibson's excellent work Be Thou My Vision, a liturgy for daily worship, designed to be read in 15 to 20 minutes a day.

Maybe you haven't seen this before and there are a couple of different versions, one over Christmas, one over Lent, but this is the first one, Be Thou My Vision. It's a great way to focus your devotional time. Again, it takes maybe 15 or 20 minutes.

It uses historical prayers, creeds, catechisms, that point to Christ. I've found it personally helpful and have used it different seasons and it's excellent. So pick up a copy of Be Thou My Vision, wherever books are sold or go to crossway.org slash plus and learn how you can get 30% off with the free Crossway Plus account.

We're also grateful for desiring God, sponsoring life in books and everything. This was really one of the first books I read as a pastor on preaching John Piper's book, The Supremacy of God in Preaching. I encourage you to get it even if you're not a pastor.

I think you would enjoy it, benefit from it, understand the call of preaching on the preacher's life, but in particular, if you are a preacher or an aspiring one, I encourage you to look at this book. John challenges preachers to keep God's glory at the center of every sermon. You might expect Piper looks to examples like Jonathan Edwards in making much of God in your preaching.

You can find the supremacy of God in preaching or wherever good books are sold. Thank you to DG. Greetings and salutations.

Welcome to life and books and everything. I'm Kevin DeYoung, Senior Pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, just outside of Charlotte. And today I'm joined by my special guest.

I'm really excited to talk about his new book. So Abi Tyler Todd, welcome to the program. And we are going to talk about the Beachers, America's most influential family.

So Abi, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what you're doing because you have a couple of different jobs. Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me.

I'm all the way over here in Marion, Illinois, where I'm the pastor at Third Baptist Church. I pastor and my wife's hometown. I am a pastor and then I teach adjunct theology for Luther Rice, college and seminary and teach a little church history for my alma mater, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

So my background, my my my doctorate is in theology, but my love is American history. And that's that's what I ride in mostly. I don't think I realize that.

So your your doctorate is actually in theology. But how did you get into this? This is a serious work of of academic history. So what's the overlap? Well, my dissertation was on Richard Furman, if you're familiar with him.

He's a South Carolina Baptist in the 19th century. And once I started kind of digging into his world, I was originally wrote my dissertation on his a Doctor of Atonement. I stumbled upon this weird theory that went around during his time called the moral governmental theory of Atonement.

It's really no longer held wildly, although I did have a guy email me about a year ago who actually still holds to the view. But I wrote my dissertation. It's really just a work of historical theology.

And in order to really get behind that view, you have to go into figures like Charles Finney, Andrew Fuller. And so naturally, that work allowed me to kind of dive into the late 18th and early 19th century world. And I just kind of fell in love with American religious history.

I had some background with Jonathan Edwards, as all Reform Babis do, I think. And so I just kind of got got into that world and slowly but surely started riding. And so this book, you can't really look at Lyman Beecher without seeing the the shadow of Jonathan Edwards, and really seeing moral governmental theory at play as well.

So moral government is a huge theme in that family. And so that's kind of how it came about. I'm also I live in the Midwest.

Kevin, I'm not sure if you would qualify Southern Illinois as Midwest. There's a there's a there's a big 10 school, not too far away, but now there's big 10 schools in California. So a definer.

Yeah, sure. The whole state of Illinois counts, but you're right. Southern Illinois is a different world.

It is. It's kind of brackish water a little bit. But I will say the fact that you've got this Yankee family being let loose into the heartland.

They live in Illinois. They I was my interest was peaked. So anyway, just personally, academically, I came to this work just with a with a both a theological and a historical perspective.

So it's published by LSU Press. And for those of you who are watching, you can see is very it's very nicely done. It's like it feels like a substantial book.

It's it's put together nicely. It can be intimidating at first because it's 350 pages. But to our listeners out there, you're 275 pages before you get to footnotes and bibliography.

So it's under 300 pages. And it's it's well written. It's an academic work, but it's, you know, it's not written in academic ease.

It's very well done. So congratulate you on this on this book. I got lots of questions.

It's really fascinating. I knew a little bit about the beaches. I have the the Debbie Apple, Applegate biography, which is a really fun read.

But this family, you have the subtitle America's most influential family. So go ahead and defend that outrageous subtitle, which I think you can, but do it. Well, for those who don't know, the original subtitle was American influencers, because I thought that would kind of peak on a lot of 21st century, because they are, they're they're obsessed with this idea of moral influence.

So the subtitle really plays at this idea. Lyman Beecher, the patriarch, one of the leading education reformers, minus Charles Finney probably the most famous revivalist of his time, and really the leading temperance advocate for his time. He takes his family out west to an upstart seminary called Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, and really just kind of catechizes his kids in moral and social reform.

And it kind of kind of reduces this phenomenon called Beecherism. And I think I say during the book, it wasn't always a compliment. It was this idea of self importance that they had.

They were really trained by their father to try to change America. And they would latch on to card playing and theater going and especially abolitionism, although it takes them some time. And during kind of this, as they're kind of coming into the national platform, they're hanging out with people like Ralph Waldo Emerson.

They hang out with President Harrison in Cincinnati before he goes and becomes a wig president. So they are, in many ways, the most recognizable family in the 19th century. And so I tried to pull from a lot of quotes where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the social reformer, she was like, the Beecher conceit is beyond understanding.

Even the friends kind of had this idea that their heads got a little big. But the one thing I love is Mark Twain going across the street in Hartford and hanging out with Harriet Beecher Stowe. They just seem to lock arms with a lot of the luminaries and predominant social figures of the time.

And they're doing it as they are engaged in moral social reform. So that's my contention that they are one of, if not the most influential family of the 19th century. I like the, it's a good subtitle.

I like your original one, too, with the word influencers. And immediately makes me think these are, if the Kardashians were in the 19th century, and they were, they were sort of, you know, on again, off again, Presbyterians, or not very good Presbyterians. And but, but they're, it's exaggerated, but it's kind of true.

They were, and we're get into it, they had tons of family drama, so much family drama. Every one of them, you know, starts to develop their own kind of brand. They're sort of all, at times the family's really close.

And other times they're very divided. It is a constant soap opera. And their, their species was a fame was moral influence, as you said.

And with that came a lot of admirers. They rub shoulders with the most famous people of the day. And also got them in trouble, especially when it proved with many of them that they weren't quite as morally formed themselves as they were telling other people to do.

You say in the introduction, you, you're talking about Beecherism, and you give three tenants. Of course, they're not writing a book on what, but you're just distilling this, hopefully, the power of the individual, the importance of the household. And then the third principle was the belief that Republican virtues such as freedom, disinterestedness, self-sacrifice, temperance, and justice were perfected in the teachings of Christianity, and the fate of the nation rested upon these values.

Just what, what, what more can you say, or how can you help us with those three themes to just introduce us to what this family was about? Sure. You really can't understand the theology of Lyman Beecher without understanding new school Calvinism, new school theology. This is something I'm sure you know plenty about Kevin as a Presbyterian.

But you really, to go even further, new Haven theology. Jonathan Edwards was more than just simply a Titanic theologian. He also left behind a huge theological tradition that was constantly innovating and changing.

And so right about a century after the Great Awakening, you have this guy named Nathaniel William Taylor who is starting to tinker around with the idea of original sin. And Lyman Beecher, who ends up being buried right next to him in New Haven, this is like his homeboy. And Lyman Beecher, I think it's best to say that he would take an overly, just speaking as a Baptist preacher, an overly optimistic appraisal of human ability.

And to a lot of people in the Edwardian tradition, the difference between moral and natural ability was biblical. It's something that Edwards established in freedom of the will. But these Taylorites, these Finnyites, these Lyman Beecher folk, they're starting to give so much natural ability that that a lot of the conservative Presbyterians and congregationalists are kind of going, whoa, wait a minute, it sounds like we don't even have original sin anymore.

You really have to understand that to get to the heart of so many of the theological drama of the 19th century, especially the Presbyterian schism of 1837. George Marsden says that that schism is really more theological than about slavery. I'd say it's both, and he does too, in some sense.

So he really, Lyman Beecher kind of bequeathes this optimistic view of humanity to his kids. And it's troubling from theological perspective, because of course it then produces, you know, like Henry Ward, you know, when evolution comes around, you know, he's taking that all the way. I mean, he swallows that whole.

So they really take that into into ways that Lyman never would have thought. It's admirable at times because they are convinced that they can change humans. They are convinced, you know, I think that's something we've lost today.

They are really convinced that if they sit people down and explain things that people can change, that is, I think, the most admirable trait of the entire group. And then secondly, family of Catherine Beecher, she's the founder of home economics. That's just so funny to say, we've almost forgotten that.

I had I had home ec when I was in seventh grade. I don't think kids have home ec anymore. And then lastly, American Republican Christianity, this is something that small are not political party yet.

That's right. Sorry, good clarification there. Just as you stated in the quote there, these principles, they believe are founded in Christianity.

That's something that Mark Knoll has done a great job in. I thought that's one of the reasons it was fitting for him to write the forward because of course, I think this family just embodies that principle. They just they're freedom, disinterestedness, self-sacrifice.

These aren't just values that were just brought out of thin air. They believe they're biblical. And if America, if the American experiment is going to survive and going to improve as they believe it will, they must come from the Bible.

Now, of course, their theology changes and their idea of moral influence evolves. And I would not lift them up as theologians. But I will say, and I think that we will talk maybe a little about this, they are so religious and they are theologically minded.

These are not your post modern liberals that we would imagine today. They're talking about Jonathan Edwards Freedom of the Will over the dinner table. They got in a fight one time.

Lyman Beecher got in a son about interpreting how divine providence and human responsibility. I mean, who does that? So they're theologically minded, but they they're really American too. At times, maybe more American than than biblical.

And I think that's something else that we see maybe in our own day. So yeah, I think that's really one of the important themes here is I mean, they are quintessential American religion. Now, which came first, the chicken or the egg, how much did they obviously, they did something to shape it in the 19th century, but they also reflect it all of these things, which I think are the best and worst of American religious impulse.

And I think in the Beecher's some more of the worst, but but I appreciate you trying to bring out some of the good things. So the good would be an entrepreneurial spirit. I find this even today when I travel outside the country.

I think one of the things that people still look American Christianity often has still a can do spirit. All right, is there a new way to do this? Let's go out. There's a program, there's a new method, there's something and the Beecher's you say have a good line at one point, while they weren't, they didn't care so much about theological precision, they did care a lot about the Bible.

Now, we can argue they didn't interpret it very well or very carefully at times, but they really cared about the Bible. They cared about Christianity being, they certainly would have been some species of Christian nationalists, like almost like most people were in the 19th century, and what has been by that today is overlaps, but different. I found this quotation here, you give from Peter Cartwright, the famous Methodist circuit writer, the great mass of our Western people, which is anything kind of past Appalachia, wanted a preacher that could mount a stump, a block or old log or stand in the bed of a wagon and without a note or manuscript quote expound and apply the word of God to the hearts and consciences of the people.

It's a great quote, and it seems, I mean, do you agree that? I think that's still, again, for some good and ill, kind of the quintessential American preacher, probably in our circles, you know, Reform Baptist, you know, conservative Presbyterian, you know, we look up to people with theological precision, and rightfully so, I wish more would. And yet, you know, the people that are, you know, have still have the biggest churches and often sell the most books are that kind of preacher, just plain spoken right to the people. How do you, how do you understand that as an American, as a pastor, as a historian, and is this something really unique to the American religious experience? Hmm.

I think it is. You know, we have this concept today that sometimes has a plastic meaning, but manifest destiny, you know, coined by a newspaper editor. But there was a time where Lyman Beecher and his generation, they thought that they needed to get out to the West to convert the West.

They thought it was just a bunch of rowdy, drunken Irishmen and Catholics, and they needed to convert them. And of course, today, we know, of some of their views. But I also think that they had this, as you said, this deep seated idea that the world, or the Western world, was not going to really be saved or converted unless the West was converted.

And they meant Native Americans, they meant immigrants. And so Lyman Beecher kind of you can't ask for a more, a more fashionable place, a more prestigious place than Boston, the land of the pilgrims. And he takes his whole family and goes to Cincinnati, Ohio, and this ain't Cincinnati, Ohio 2025.

This is, this is 1832. And he does it because of this belief that somebody's got to get the simple gospel out to the masses, to the rank and file, to the everyday people. And I think that is something that Lyman Beecher inherited from his Puritan forebears, from the revivalists who came before him.

He's reading books on the first great awakening, revival narratives. So you're right, there is this practicality that's built into American evangelicalism. And we see it so vividly in Lyman.

And what does he do? He, he, he takes his kids on revivals, you know, on the way there on the way, on the way to Cincinnati, they stop and wheeling what is today West Virginia. And he says, George, get out there and preach, you know, and the other brother is passing out tracks, you know, and I think that Harriet says that they were passing moral influence, you know, everywhere they went, they saw revivalism and reform as two sides of the same practical ministerial coin. They had to get out there and they, they weren't going to do it in colleges and seminaries, they were going to do it on the stump.

And in Lane's seminary, Lyman calls it a revival seminary. I mean, what in the world is that? We don't put those words together, but he didn't see them as very different. Now, of course, he did have kids who went on to be academic.

Edward was the inaugural president of Illinois there in the abolitionist movement. So there is a prag, practicality in the beaches that I think turns into at times sheer pragmatism. And I think at that point, we see, we see the ills of American evangelicalism.

They're just convinced at all points that we just need to get the word out to as many people as we can. And I think they sometimes are guilty of trying to measure the kingdom of God in terms of their hearers, instead of seeing it as maybe a mustard seed that needs to grow and take time. So we see that all those things big and small in the Beecher family.

Yeah, and you have some great lines too from Mark Twain and others, maybe get to them when we talk about Henry Ward Beecher. But, you know, especially the sons that became pastors, many of them did, you know, they would say you couldn't even call it congregational or Presbyterian or Baptist. It was just Beecherism.

There was so much Beecher. There was hardly anything else left, which is is also American and is not the, you know, again, I appreciate the Americans, you know, preachers, American preaching is okay with the preacher having a personality. And yet it can easily overtake everything else.

Lyman Beecher. So he everywhere these Beechers go, there's controversy. And Lyman Beecher is fighting the Unitarians, you know, from our perspective, good for him in Boston.

But heresy trials follow him all the time because he does not seem to, you know, toe the old school line very carefully. And then at Lane's seminary, tell us the rebellion there because almost overnight he loses all of his students. What happened? To understand what happens at Lane in the 1830s, you really have to go back to Charles Finney.

I wish Michael Horton would, I would love to know his thoughts on this, not just for Finney himself, but his legacy. Finney is in the burned liturgical. It's also this, this emanating social reformist impulse that people apply the same thought of, Hey, we've got to get converts and we've got to make sure they come down to the anxious bench.

It, it kind of starts to apply that same ideology to abolitionism. Okay, so so you've got to, you've got to, you've got to get on your knees and say the prayer and surrender to Christ. You've got to turn away from slavery.

You cannot serve any slaveholders at the Lord's table. There's this same immediate emancipationist, just as conversion is immediate, conversion to abolitionism is immediate. And so Finneyism becomes yoked with social extremism.

And so at the very same time, or almost the very same time that Beecher is in Lane's seminary, which is, of course, across the river from Kentucky. So it's got a little bit of that brackish water slaveholder Cincinnati. It needs that, that, that, that business with, with the South.

In Northern Ohio, you have Oberlin College, which is, I mean, founded by abolitionists. Absolutely. It is the, I mean, if at the risk of anachronism, it is the, the wokest place you could be in terms of just being on the cutting edge of social issues.

Well, when Finney converts this young reformer named Timothy Dwight Weld in Western New York, in Oneida, Weld does what he goes out and he starts to talk about social issues, talk, talk about manual labor starts to talk about economics, which at that time was about the study of memory. And he comes down to Lane's seminary and he sees a reformer that he thinks is named Lyman Beecher, who he's like, Hey, this guy's like me. Well, at that time, Weld is so powerful and so influential that he starts to convert students.

And by the time things really get out of hand, you've got a, a student campus rebellion that happens where essentially the faculty and the administration and trustees are pitted against these young whipper snapper abolitionist students called Weldites. And they basically kind of give a Lane seminary and ultimatum, they're like, look, if you don't, if you don't admit, or sorry, if you don't approve of abolitionism, if you don't stand against slave owning, we're going to leave. These are just like, you know, campus protests.

That's right. That's what they are. It's the young people coming to the administration, you need to divest from this company, you need to support this or else, except this time the students actually won.

That's right. Hey, man, there's another parallel today, isn't it? I mean, and just so happens that Lyman Beecher is on the East Coast fundraising and essentially in a matter of months, his seminary is gutted. And what do they do? They go all the way up and they attend Oberlin College.

And because that's just where abolitionists and social fanatics are. And so at that time, it really is a turning point in Lyman Beecher's career. I think he, I think Lyman Beecher was always ahead of the curve socially, but not, he was also a pragmatist.

He knew when to kind of push. And then he meets this young reformer who is all the way. He kind of beaters Beecher, I think I say in the book.

And he really never quite relinquishes his approval of colonization, which is a view at that time. And so anyway, I think the Beecher kids see what happened. And I think they start to think, hey, we might need to maybe go along with abolitionism and so it's a turning point in America, for sure, because at that time Oberlin gets stronger.

Finney eventually becomes the president of Oberlin. And Finneyism becomes yoked with abolitionism. That line out Beecher, Beecher is instructive.

And again, there are lots of parallels today. You see this on both the left and the right. Politically, socially, culturally, you'll have one set of loud voices.

Again, you can think of the own issues or listeners can in their heads. And you'll get a provocateur. But yet there's still some kind of sense of, I'm at the far edge of what I'm calling for here on the right or the left, but I'm still somewhat mainstream.

And then someone will come along and say, uh, we don't, you're part of the problem. You care too much about being mainstream. And that's what happened because you use the language.

The Beechers were, for most of their time, they were conservative abolitionists. So, uh, they were, they were innovators. They were not iconoclasts.

That's a good way to put it. And they always wanted to chip away, but they never quite wanted to wrangle the mainstream. That's a good way of putting it.

Uh, as a Presbyterian, I was particularly interested in this line. You say in the late 1830s with names like Calhoun, Jackson, Lovejoy, Finney, Weld, Beecher, and Thorne Well, it seemed that the fate of the abolitionist movement and of the nation itself was tied to the Presbyterian denomination. So unpack that sentence.

I knew you would bring up that quote. I knew you would. Um, you know, I stand by that.

Uh, you can't really study the 19th century. Uh, and I would even, um, if we're ambitious, uh, I mean, at that time, there's a young congressman in Illinois who is attending first Presbyterian Springfield. Of course, I don't think Abraham Lincoln ever became a member there, but Mary Todd did.

Uh, and, and Lincoln grew up, uh, very hardcore Calvinist. And that's right. That's right.

And I think James Buchanan was a, uh, a Presbyterian as well. Um, and so I, I really think that many of the most outspoken, most influential, uh, people who, who really shaped the national conversation over slavery in the 1800s, uh, were many of them, just an overwhelming amount were, were Presbyterians. And that, that I'm a Baptist.

Uh, man, I wish we had more movers and shakers. Um, you know, we do, you know, obviously Lincoln was raised by hard shell primitive Baptist. Um, you know, so they were there.

Henry Clay was raised by a Baptist preacher. Um, but I must say, Presbyterians make their way into, I mean, Jackson, Andrew Jackson, I mean, just probably a bad Presbyterian, but, um, I think that there is just that, that, um, the Presbyterian denomination has always had a way of being very, you're gonna, you might push back against this. The, the Presbyterian denomination has always had a way of being very high church and very, very connected with, uh, the civil government and it's going on while being able to retain it at the very same time.

It's in the evangelical moorings and, and experimental religion. And you see that in the, in the 1800s. It's, it's both a revivalistic evangelical religion, but it's also a very influential, socially engaged and intelligent religion.

Uh, and, and as a Baptist, I just have to say, um, I was struck by that while I was writing this book. And, you know, the, the, the Baptist and the Methodist were evangelizing the frontier in the countryside and, and planting thousands and thousands of churches where the Presbyterians are, are moving more slowly. So it is the, the, the, the flip side of that.

And of course, they're Presbyterians. I mean, really in the 19th century, Presbyterians, Baptist Methodist, we think of them as very different now, especially the Methodists, but those were the three Protestant evangelical and a lot of them were, were really on, they were the mainstreamed and they were on the same page with a lot of social reform. And though, you know, Methodists are, are minion, but yeah, especially if you're one of these kind of Finneite who isn't too concerned about the niceties of theology, you can really find, you know, your, your kindred spirits among these different groups.

And, and I wonder, I'll ask you as a, you know, Baptist pastor and, and scholar, if you think this is fair or true, I still think today, you know, I've lots of good Baptist friends. I think in Baptist circles, like if you're with a bunch of Baptist pastors, that there still is kind of a, a cache in the room, and I don't mean this in, it has to be a sinful way, but would, would probably be, you know, how big is your church? You know, how many people have come to know the Lord? There is just a resolute nonstop focus on the Great Commission's saving souls where I think Presbyterians, you know, it, a PhD is going to get you a long ways. You know, can you, can you quote, even do you know the BCO? And, you know, do you know the confession? There's a, there's an intellectualism, which could be good or bad that I think carries more weight.

Do you think that's a still a fair difference? Obviously, there's overlap. If you're in a, you know, a Elmolar, Mark Deaver, kind of Baptist influence world, I say to my friends there, you're more like Presbyterians. Yeah, as someone who I was born and raised in Western Kentucky, which is, I mean, very, very, every day, grassroots, blue collar, you can, you can throw a rock and hit a church, but I would say the most, the majority of those churches to your point, at least in the Baptist realm, are going to look, experience is going to speak louder than education, I think.

Just, and I say that just as somebody in the ministry who's, who's walked through that and, and has friends. So yeah, I think that, that, that impulse is still alive and well in the Baptist church. And that's somebody who, you know, just two, two hours down the road from where I'm from, is Southern Seminary.

And I had two degrees from there. I think God for my time at Southern Seminary, but I must say Southern Seminary is for all the good that it's done, both in my, in my ministry and in the convention itself. Not always reflective when you go drop down, you know, a gravel road an hour away and you know, they're not, they don't, they don't probably, some of them don't even know Malmolar is.

You know, they just want to know if you can preach the gospel or kind of like that Peter Cartwright, they want somebody who's going to mount a stump and start preaching, you know. So that impulse is there in Baptist life. As the Presbyterians, um, yeah, I see them as still a very, um, intellectual denomination.

I'm going to have Baptist, my Baptist buddies just write me over the calls for saying, we're an intellectual tell you are you are and there's a rich tradition of, you know, all of the founders of Southern Seminary, many of whom studied at Old Princeton. So it's not a sharp dichotomy, but, and I would say I think, well, Baptist can go liberal too. I think the emphasis on, you know, plain preaching plain folks, saving souls, preaching the Bible has, has, can be a good, you know, antidote to a Presbyterian, you know, Presbyterians, very educated, usually, you know, in the mainstream of moral reform, you, you can lose the plot quickly.

And that's some of, some of what we see with the beaches. I also want to mention Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, our friends down there, just a couple hours to the Southwest of where I am. Twice a year, Greenville hosts a limited cohort of pastors and church leaders for intensive seminars focused on fulfilling the great commission.

This mid-weeker, as they're calling it, the next one is April 1 through 3. The sessions will explore the biblical foundation for missions, challenge, how we might help our churches connect to an unreached language group, practical strategies, speakers include Chad Vegas, Brooks Puser, Jonathan Master, Michael Morales, an application is required before registration can be completed. That deadline is March 21st. Go to gpts.edu. And finally, we are happy to have Westminster Theological Seminary sponsor LBE once again.

If you are looking for a richer, deeper understanding of scripture, maybe you've been studying the Bible for a long time, you feel like you're a little bit of a dead end, maybe it would help to sharpen your skills in studying with others. Often we think of studying the Bible as just an individual enterprise, but really there are things to learn and grow when we theological studies program. You can join Christians really from all over the world.

Learn about apologetics, biblical interpretation, church history, and more for a cohesive understanding of God's word and enrich your faith. Maybe this MA would be helpful for you. Learn more at wts.edu. So I want to zero in on the most well-known, but before we do that, so we talk about Lyman, we'll talk about him and then Harriet Beecher Stowe, of course, Uncle Tom's cabin and Henry Ward Beecher.

But real quickly, this is lightning round here. Just give us some bullet points on some of these other Beechers. Okay, Lyman Beecher, I'm looking.

This is really helpful at the beginning. Obby's got a great, I had to keep going back. Which Beecher am I talking about here? That was Mark Knoll's idea.

When he, when he, when I asked him to do the forward, he basically had one caveat. He said, you need to put a family tree and I am so glad that he said that because I, you're probably about the dozenth person that's told me it's helpful. So just a you know, a few, you know, sentences on each of these.

So Lyman Beecher, 1775, dies 1863. His first well-traveled affluent educated Episcopalian, which was very unique at that time. So I even wrote an article about this one time.

You know, just imagine a woman whose grandfather was a revolutionary war hero. She came from a really wealthy family, Episcopalian, and she marries a congregationalist revivalist. If you transport to that 20th century, it'd be like a, you know, it'd be like a main liner, Episcopalian, Marion, you know, a, you know, a funda, fundamentalist backwoods preacher from Tennessee.

It's kind of had that, that, that, that feel for it. So anyway, Roxanna is the mother of nine, nine. And she imparts during her life in many ways, and through her family, you can kind of see how the, the Beechers, and this is, of course, another issue, just talking about divided family.

Her Episcopalian influence kind of, I think is brought to bear upon the kids. For instance, her, her, her sister, when, and Esther, you know, when she would come and take care of the kids, she would not take them to the congregationalist church. She would march them over to the Episcopalian church, and she would not catechize them at night in the Westminster.

And so even at the early age, you can see that this house divided between a Puritan and a non Puritan kind of starts to maybe influence the kids so much so that after Lyman dies, just so happens that after he dies, which I think is a coincidence, what do you see? You see two of the, of the, of the ladies of Harriet and Catherine, they join the Episcopalian church. They kind of go back to the church of their mother. So there's that Roxanna casts a long shadow over the book, and I would even go so far as to say that I probably could have written more about that in the book itself.

So they have Lyman and the Roxanna have nine children, Harriet dies an infancy. So eight, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher will come back to. So just whatever you want to give on Catherine, William, Edward, Mary, George or Charles, what, what, what, what nuggets do you want to give us on these others who were, you know, very accomplished and, and sometimes controversial in their own right? Yes.

The very first martyr for free press in the abolitionist movement Elijah Lovejoy, Presbyterian, he dies in out in Illinois at the hands of an anti abolitionist mob and Edward Beecher, who happens to be the president of Illinois College, the first president, he kind of takes up his mantle and and he's kind of the first Beecher to throw himself into the abolitionist movement. Charles Beecher becomes famous because he writes an attack against the fugitive slave law in 1851. Fugitive slave law galvanizes Harriet to write Uncle Tom's Cabin.

George, a lot of people don't know this, but the first real abolitionist, the real first hot headed ultra social extremist, if you will, in the family is George. Now George takes his own life sadly, but George joins the American Anti-Sleeper Society. He is somebody who really is known in the family until his death as the leading vocal, most vocal member of the family in regards to abolitionism.

So even the unsung members are having a huge effect upon the more well known members. Catherine is not just a she's not just the the founder of home economics, but she actually founds one of the first women's seminaries in America. And I would say a lot of people overlook the fact that the the the the the signature campaign that she that she initiates in 1828 on behalf of the Cherokee, writing a letter to women against Andrew Jackson, basically saying, you know, don't push out the the Native Americans that that that strategy is taken later by the abolitionist movement.

So so even the unsung beaches have a huge effect upon social politics in the United States and upon the Beecher family itself. Why did George take his life? George always struggled with melancholy. I think is how they would phrase that back in the day.

I would I would say that George, I think scholars have been somewhat unfair to Lyman Beecher in this regard. Some people blame it on Calvinism. I don't think that's right.

They think that they blame it on Lyman being an overbearing father. And of course at times he was, but George is actually becomes one of the biggest adherence to Charles Finney. And and kind of does it probably with his father's disapproval.

And George is the first one of the family to start toying around with this idea of perfectionism. George is the one who kind of starts, you know, for those of you who are not aware, it's this idea that you can be without sin. You can work yourself by the spirit to a point where you are without sin, you are sinless.

And I'm and I'm sure a method of scholar might critique me for that point, but that definition. But more or less, George is the one who really thinks that he can strive to be sinless and that he must be so. And I think that has a huge bearing upon his sense of assurance.

I think it has a huge consequence for the way that he valued his own walk with the Lord. And I think he was plagued with a lot of guilt and a lot of a lot of self doubt throughout his life. And I think ultimately he just didn't want to live anymore.

I want to be careful there because I'm not sure that I can say with a hundred percent certainty. But this gets back to beaturism. He dies.

And what happens, Catherine writes and auto basically writes a biography of her of her deceased brother. And so they're always coming for the to the aid of the other. And nothing really kind of stirs them up like going after one of them.

The only thing that truly divides the family is Henry Ward Beecher's sex scandal trial. There's a teaser. Hang on, listeners.

We're coming to that. And there are times reading this. It's good talking to you, Abi, because I find it hard to be real sympathetic to the Beecher's.

They seem preening, overwhelming. They were right on slavery and will give them to denounce it and give them credit for that. And your point about they thought people could change.

That's good. And yet, man, at times they don't share, you know, my theological sensibilities. They and but by the end, you do you feel sorry for them in a way also because though they're larger than life and they brought some of this upon themselves, there's also, this isn't the only suicide when you when you stretch out to the children of the children.

It's not the only really painful difficulty. And with the sex scandal, which we're coming to, yeah, it shows us the real life of what may have been America's most influential family in the 19th century, most famous, most influential, most significant and most pained and strained and lots of twists and turns. So let's just quickly talk about the his second wife.

He has a third wife, Lydia, they don't have children. His second wife, Harriet Porter, they marry in 1817. They have four kids Frederick dies at age two in Isabella, Thomas and James.

So quick minute or so on Harriet and then on these three children that live past infancy. Yeah, the youngest lady, Isabella, becomes a leading advocate for women's rights. When I say leading, I mean, you could put next to Stanton and name escapes me at the moment.

Yeah, all the Seneca Falls ladies in the yes, there you go. I mean, she's up there. And then when I say leading, I mean, I mean, leading.

I mean, she is a beacher after all she finds a way to put herself at the front of that movement. So she becomes really the she looks a lot like what we would look. I mean, when we think of maybe more progressive egalitarian female evangelicals today, you see a little bit of Isabella there in a way that's not with Harriet or or Catherine who were a little bit more old school.

Thomas is a pastor who becomes a real well-known pastor in his own right, Nell Meyer in New York. He was always kind of resented his older brother in Brooklyn, Henry, because he was just, you know, more famous. But Thomas actually comes under the influence of Horace Bushnell.

Most people don't know who that is, but he has been really called by a lot of scholars, the father of American religious liberalism. You know, this is before the rise of what we know today as German higher criticism or theological liberalism, which comes at the really the end of the 19th century. But for that time, the leading theological liberal was Horace Bushnell.

He was in the Congregationalist church. He started playing around with meanings of words, the Trinity. He I mean, Thomas really kind of becomes his disciple.

And Lyman does not approve. I think that bears mentioning. So Thomas really becomes one of the first pastors to start what eventually becomes known as a settlement house, kind of a kind of dovetailing.

It's kind of, but my definition would put a YMCA inside of a church, you know, kind of making it a more ecumenical, just activity driven, socially oriented church. So he's one of the first to really embrace that. And his name will get thrown around in history books, you'll see that.

Isabella Thomas James is the youngest, and he has really youngest child syndrome. He has he has striking blue eyes. He's kind of got a fighter sense.

And he really does and uses that in the Civil War. He he starts or he leads an all African American unit in in the union. And he actually to his credit, he's somebody who was not only a good chaplain, but he was such a good soldier that they moved him out of the chaplain.

So he just made him a soldier. That was another thing about the beaches is they just show up all over the Civil War. They're like the battle of like Chancellorsville, then you've got like two beaches at the Battle of Gettysburg, and they find their they find each other in the battle.

It's just it's like Forrest Gump, they just show up all these like, you know, at these times. And that gets back to a point that I wanted to mention is one that's one of the reasons I wanted to write the book. Not only is this family so comical and personality driven, but they really are a microcosm of American religion in the 19th century.

And that's that's if I had to boil it down, that's probably when I wanted to write the book is I'm not taking really, this is not I think for anyone who reads it a defense of the family. It's because this family just is a big cartoon for the for the nation itself. And so from the oldest to the youngest, you really have all these folks really bringing out these issues and theological systems.

And so as you said, you really can't read this book without kind of saying, oh, wow, we're still dealing with some of that stuff. So I'm talking to Ibertabi Tyler Todd, the Beechers, this book, Lovely Cover. Now I notice on this cover, I couldn't help but notice there's Lyman in the middle.

Now, four daughters there. I have five sons, four daughters. I hope I hope not to to travel the same path as the Beechers.

I don't have I don't have room for that much excitement or tragedy for that matter. But let's talk about these two that we haven't talked about who are the most well known after Lyman at least. So Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose husband is quite a fine professor and scholar in his own right.

And most people will know that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, whether Lincoln said it or not, that it was it was, you know, an accurate statement in a way that this is a little lady who started the Civil War, sold 300,000 copies right out of the gate, the best-selling book other than the Bible, which is always the best-selling book in America, but the best-selling book in the 19th century. So give us, you make the point, I think this is your contribution here, because people at least should remember Americans should remember some of those details. But you say this was really this was a family affair.

Of course, she wrote the book and she claimed it came from God almost by direct quasi-revelation. But you say it was also a family affair and it was also Beecherism through and through. What do you mean by that? Big Tom.

Well, first of all, Charles is the one who goes into the Deep South for the first time. You know, they are Yankees now. They don't have a lot of firsthand knowledge of the South.

Now, Harriet did go into Kentucky. She did get to see a plantation. But even at that time, people understood the slavery in Kentucky was nothing like New Orleans.

Charles went and worked for a trading house and really wrote back to his sister and said, you won't believe what it's like down here. So he gives her some details for the book from the beginning. Even as she's writing it, for instance, Catherine is taking care of the kids.

She's a mom. She's got to work at this time. She's writing for a magazine called National Era and it comes out in installments.

So she's got deadlines to meet. So her sisters are taking care of the kids. Isabella kind of reviews it after she writes it.

Even after she writes it, the kind of southern statesmen and southerners naturally just think it's anathema and think it's awful and consider that she mentions some folks. And they think that it's basically maligning them. I think that some people sue her or it gets into lawsuits or I forgot the details.

But basically, she enlists her brothers to help her fact find, to make sure that people know that this is not just a fanciful account. This is actually, even though it is fiction, it is drawn from real life. This is how slaves really were mistreated.

There really were really cruel, wicked people who like Simon Lagree, who really had they broke up families and they had no qualms about it. So she's enlisting the help of her family through and through to make sure that this thing gets into print. And Beecherism, I mean, first of all, Uncle Tom, he doesn't drink, which is, Lyman Beecher would have approved of Uncle Tom.

He was sober. I forgot how she said it. He got religion at a revival.

Come on, that is American evangelicalism right there. That's Lyman Beecher again. And so Beecherism also, Uncle Tom, it often describes Uncle Tom as disinterested, I believe.

If it's not disinterested, it's like self-sacrificial. She has adjectives to describe this figure, which is a Christ figure in many ways, and was recognized at the time as such. But she has a way of describing Uncle Tom in a way that he's a Republican, small R. He's an American.

He's a good American, and he's a good Christian, and that just gets back to a value of Beecherism. So she's injecting a little bit of the family philosophy into this book, and you really can't read it without seeing the values of the family. That's very well said.

So with the time we have left, we need to talk about Henry Ward Beecher. And maybe students out there, pastors, you kind of bell, and maybe you get them confused with, oh, a Harriet Beecher and then this Beecher. But again, in more conservative, Protestant, Calvinist, evangelical circles, this is not one of our heroes, and yet, boy, he was, as you say, in several different ways.

He was probably at the largest church at the time, the most famous preacher. I mean, he was in America, the celebrity pastor of Celebrity Pastors, just a few things you say. When Henry Ward Beecher arrived in Brooklyn, the fall of 1847, it had already become the fourth largest city.

So there, Brooklyn is at this time, you know, separate from New York City. But important, you say, Brooklyn was called a city of churches. It was a home to over 130 congregations.

So this is a, this says, don't think Brooklyn 2025, this is a very churchy place. And here's your description of his Western revival style, even though he's a New Englander, Beecher's extemporae style, dispensing with notes during the sermons appeal to a wide variety of churchgoers from the businessmen to the politician to the chimney sweep. One observer called him a combination of Saint Paul and PT Barnum.

Walt Whitman says, it was only fair to say a Beecher that he was not a minister. There was so much of him, there was little left of him to be a minister. Gary Dorian, who's a well-known historian of American liberalism, to the extent he had a theology, he preached a watered down new school revivalism rooted in the belief, the love and righteousness of God, the regenerative influence of Christ, the moral capacity of human beings to turn from sin.

So what made him so successful from just numbers and notoriety? And then tell us about his downfall. If in fact, it was a downfall. Oh, absolutely was.

Well, first of all, the boy could communicate. He was his father's son. And that is part of the irony.

I mean, isn't that just, isn't that just humanity itself? I mean, we are our parents' kids. So the story of Henry and Lyman is that he hates his father's religion, yet in many ways he becomes his dad, because Lyman could talk. And Henry doesn't have the piety, doesn't have the theology, but man, he can talk, he didn't need notes at that time.

That was, you know, that was fair. I wouldn't say it was revolutionary had been done before. It was the second great awakening after all.

But for to be in a pulpit like that, and just, you know, talk and really be able to connect with the Brooklyners, Brooklynites, as you said, you know, people would, they didn't want to spend their weekends in Manhattan. They just wanted to go work in Manhattan. They wanted to come and go to church and in at his church.

The idea, though, was that everything was about Henry, you know, his when he went and donated rifles to Bleeding Kansas, you know, they called him Beecher Bibles, the fairies that would take people from Manhattan to Brooklyn were called Beecher Boats. And Walt Whitman even said, he's like, he thinks they're making them Beecherites, you know, more than followers of Jesus. So Henry always had a way of connecting with people.

His personality was absolutely infectious. But he always seemed to have a way of creating a following and a posse. And this really helped him in his sex scandal.

He had people who defended him to the death, even though it was quite clearly, he was guilty. Yeah, when you get to that, I'm just fascinated and saddened by he, he, I mean, the church is eager to, I mean, they rally. It's not even close.

And I appreciate as a pastor, a church wanting to defend their, their pastor. And yet there have to be a time where you, you're willing to have your eyes open. That's right.

And he had that magnetism that so many of the Beechers did. Even the way that he constructed his new sanctuary was, was pretty revolutionary for the time. I think, I think Charles Finney was the first one to erect one where it was kind of more circular, where everyone could look him in his, in his eye, which by the way, Charles Finney's eyes, goodness gracious.

But Henry wanted to kind of have a platform too. You know, he, he, he was, he was ushering in the dawn of the attraction style mega church is what he was. And just as you had the beginnings of what we would call today, the suburb, you know, he was, he was the, he was the first person to really kind of say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to say some stuff, but I'm just going to water down what I need to say because I don't want to offend everybody and I just need to give them the meat.

And that was admirable at times, but it became really people pleasing and really was what we would today call just, just, just tolerance, just not trying to offend anybody. I think one scholar says that he was just kind of a weather vane for whatever was the popular sentiment at the time. And I think that was his legacy was if you wanted to know what anybody thought in mainstream America, you just went and listened to one of his sermons.

Abraham Lincoln had copies of his speeches and his sermons, which I think speaks loudly to just how much fame he had. And ultimately, I think with sex scandal, he got really tied up with the women's rights movement. He really started playing around with free love.

And I think that the life and ministry of Henry Ward Beecher is a testament that ideas and theological doctrines have real life, relevant bearing and outworking in our everyday lives. And it was to his detriment, I think it ultimately started his legacy. So he's, he's really at the height of his powers.

You say he starts to develop, you know, a taste in, you know, I forget those diamonds or other kinds of jewels and has a, you know, a nice vacation home. He's preaching to larger audiences than any pastor in the nation. As famous as Harry Beecher still was, he may have been even more well known, one historian called him the first popular leader of American liberal Protestantism.

And then he has this sex scandal, which you, you just, it's, do you laugh? Do you cry? So Theodore Tilton's wife Elizabeth. So after a while, Elizabeth and Henry became more than friends. You say religion slowly turned to coquettish romance, which is, I always have to remember that word is like, you know, fawning kind of, you know, boyfriend, girlfriend, once this is Elizabeth humorously referred to herself, Theodore, her husband, and the pastor, Henry Ward Beecher, as a trinity.

Okay, folks out there, if you and a spouse, your spouse and someone else are a trinity, something's wrong. So how did this break? Because this is an amazing story too with Victoria Woodhall. Give us the, what happened here with this sex scandal, which was every bit as big a story as you could have in the 19th century.

Oh man, it was. I would say that the first sex scandal in American history technically is, well, other New Yorker, Alexander Hamilton. But I would say the very first church scandal, at least in terms of American evangelicalism, big church, big name that, that, what we understand today, I think it, it starts with Henry Ward Beecher.

Basically, Henry Ward's house becomes this basically salon for hosting luminaries and thinkers in radical left wing activists for the women's rights movement. And so he kind of brushes shoulders with all these kinds of progressive thinkers. And what happens is he starts to indulge this relationship with the wife of one of his friends or one of his co-workers.

And I think that the idea is that this, there's this, there's this extreme fringe idea at the time called free love that essentially, you know, I don't, just to be fair to Henry, I'm not sure that he ever, I don't know if he ever held to, but this idea that love could evolve. This gets back to changing doctrine. It was, you know, the Beecher's never really found a new idea they didn't like.

If it was fashionable, you know, if, if, if Herbert Spencer came along was talking about social Darwinism or whatever, they're like, Hey man, I'm down with this, you know, for a knowledge. Yes, let's do that. That's right.

They're on the cutting edge. And I think that's one of the reasons I started the book with Lyman Beecher. He was, he was, he was, he was, this, maybe not necessarily an idea, but he was against dueling.

You know, they just seem to inject themselves into every single popular conversation, which I think just to make a relevant point, I think the Beechers are a, a, an illustration of why it's dangerous to give your thoughts and to jump into every single controversy of the day. They did that and it bit them. They felt they, they always needed to open their mouths.

And I'm not sure that was wise, but making it back to Henry, I think the idea of a higher love, kind of, kind of think about like Darwin meets morality. I think that, I think that after he begins meeting with her and they just become swamped in this new womanist ideology, I think that he slowly begins to subscribe to the idea that love can evolve such that it became, it can transcend marriage. It can transcend faithfulness and covenants and so on.

And of course, that's just, we, we think of that and go what in the world, especially for this guy taking it back to Beecherism, who believed in family values, which is why he did not have the, the full support always of his, of his family. In fact, Isabella went really hard at him and really never forgave him and was not invited to his funeral when he, and then some of the siblings didn't forgive her. That's right.

That's right. Just, just how human they are. And to your earlier point, it is sad.

It's a tragedy in many ways. My, his, my fellow historian and friend, Miles Smith is getting ready to review this. And he says, he said something the other day about online about, I don't think, I don't take as optimistic or as favorable a view of this family as you do.

And I can see that because you really can see every part of the family. But what I try to do in this book is to go, man, I appreciate what they're doing. They have such good traits.

But man, it's sad at the same time. And, and I can see if somebody goes, man, these folks are just sad. And then I can also understand people go, man, there's something noble here.

By the time you get to the end, you just kind of think both. But you, you, you get to that sex scandal with Henry and you go, man, this is not a unified family. You, you point out there split between, you know, the first, the children of the first wife and the children of the second wife, you know, the ones who are, who are full brothers or half brothers and sisters with so it splits along those lines.

And then yeah, Isabella and, and then you say it spins out to grandkids. I mean, it does end. It's almost Shakespearean and the kind of tragedy.

It is. And I also wanted to include, well, not only Mary, Mary's the only private beacher, I think is what her grandson says, or grand nephew. Mary, whose actual, whose daughter or granddaughter becomes one of the most famous women's advocates, women's rights advocates, but Mary will not speak to Isabella.

But something happens, Catherine, before she dies, basically finds a way to get Harriet and Isabella, who live on other sides of the street. And he invites Isabella to come play croquet at Harriet's house, just so they can start talking again. And which is human again.

It's just like, you know, you have these, these famous family, these rich affluent New England people who just can't walk across the street and talk that, and, and so they were, they were bridge builders. And I want, I will say, one of the most admirable points of Henry's life that gets overlooked, Henry was oddly enough, one of the leading antagonists of the South during the Civil War. The South hated him, hated his guts.

But then after the war, sometimes at the expense of his own reputation, he is one of the leading advocates that they need to make amends and try to reunite themselves with the South in the reconstruction era. So sometimes, sometimes the beaches could be quite admirable. And they always believed in building bridges.

The problem is sometimes they wanted to build a bridge to theological liberalism, and they built a bridge to know where you say at the very, you know, wrapping up as you're talking about Henry. And, you know, he, I said, was it his downfall? It was, and yet he, he kind of survives. He's just not, he's not the same man he was.

After years evading the issue of infidelity, Beecher's open-mindedness was perceived by many as mere people, pleasing his love for neighbor as self-preservation. Henry left behind a complicated legacy in the Beecher family. So, you know, briefly, Abi, what, what is the legacy of the Beecher family? And we've hit on a lot of it, but what, what do you want readers, listeners out there to take away either as Americans, humans, and especially as Christians? I think that the Beecher family illustrates well that the gospel and Christians have an unbelievable potential to change the United States.

Now, obviously, that's not our goal. They were making converts, and that's our goal today, is to, to make disciples of all nations. But simple things like a temperance society, you know, or a simple thing like, hey, let's pass out Bibles or something as simple as, hey, let's help other women to try to be good moms.

Man, the Beecher's were doing that, and they did a really good job of it. We shouldn't overlook that because I think that's a moment we're in right now is where there's this loss of American civil religion. And you know what, the Beecher's felt that way too.

And what did they do? They didn't, they didn't go to Washington, they got in their home and they started reading the Bible and they started converting. So that's, that's, I think, one of the greatest legacies, I think of the Beecher family is they, we need to recover this idea that, yeah, the gospel can have moral influence, but I also think that's the, the, the warning is we should not put moral influence before the gospel itself at, I would say the, the, the, the most complicated, most tragic legacy of the family is that because they put social and moral reform before doctrine, they put the carp for the horse. And by the time that we get done, Isabella is talking about a mother God.

She's talking about crazy. They're doing people doing seances in the family. Yeah.

And so they really lost their compass. They, they, their ambition was noble, but they uprooted themselves from what I would say was their Puritan Protestant tradition. And they, they became kind of blown and tossed with every wind of doctrine that blew through the 19th century.

And, and that itself is sad. And that has particular relevance for us in 2025. We have to keep rooted in the gospel itself.

We cannot just chase some campaign or some fad thinking that somehow that's the litmus test for our faith. I think our, our faith, if it's, if it becomes detached from the love of God and love of Jesus and following him and, and, and confessing that faith once delivered to the saints, if it becomes uprooted from that, then it becomes, you know, it becomes de-youngism and it becomes tautism. And, and we're, we're all about the gospel itself.

So that's a, that's a great summary. Thank you, Abi, for coming on the program and for the book The Beachers by LSU Press, America's most influential family. So check it out and until next time, glorify God, enjoy him forever and read a good book.