Scripture tells Christians that they are to be in the world but not of the world and church history has shown that a reoccurring problem is knowing at what point the believer crosses the line and becomes not only in the world but of it as well. Dr. Miller made some good points in his case that are worthy of contemplation, but as he addressed objections to his views, his responses increasingly become strained. The presentation of his message at some points during his theater comments is—as much as one can tell from reading the text and not seeing him live in the pulpit—one of reprimand and rebuke (if seen live, his mannerisms and tone of voice might have softened the words). Where Alexander emphasized comfort for Richmond and the nation as expressed in his Bible text regarding weeping, Miller’s passage rebuked the people in a difficult time.
Catastrophes redirect people from the temporal to the eternal. After 911, many confused, disconsolate, and mourning individuals who formerly had little thought of God went to churches seeking answers to their questions. God uses floods, fires, whirlwinds, earthquakes, and other major events to bring his people to faith in Christ. The fire in Richmond’s theater on December 26, 1811, killed over eighty people including Virginia’s governor and it injured many others. It was a horrifying blaze as the flames spread rapidly across dry wood and fabric, but the horror became tragic because people could not escape through the theater’s inadequate passages, a constricted stairway, and too few exit doors. Meredith Henne Baker’s The Richmond Theater Fire recounts the event in all its details; shows how Richmonders chose to memorialize the dead; and then tells how memory of the fire influenced the city and nation in subsequent years. Baker emphasizes how the nearly church-less city of Richmond harvested from its non-religious residents many that became Christians and seeded new congregations or were added to the few existing ones.
Baker recounts the post-fire ministries of Episcopalians, Baptists, and Methodists, and a good bit of the text is dedicated to three Presbyterian ministers that would become particularly important for American theological education. Archibald Alexander was at the time the minister of Pine Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and would in 1812 become the first professor of the Presbyterian seminary at Princeton. Samuel Miller was serving in a collegiate pastorate in New York with John Rodgers. Miller would be appointed Alexander’s colleague at Princeton in 1813. John Holt Rice, at the time pastoring rural congregations in Virginia, would soon become the minister of Richmond’s First Presbyterian Church and then in later years direct Union Seminary in Virginia through some difficult times to bring stability and prepare it for the future.
There were many sermons delivered across the nation following the fire other than those of Alexander, Miller, and Rice, some of them would relate the catastrophe to what were known as worldly amusements. Such amusements included social dancing, card playing, games of chance, and attending the theater, among others. Note that the theater in the era was not always considered a proper place for Christians because theaters could vary in propriety from base dives and gratuitous indecency to more acceptable forms such as the performance presented by Placide and Green Company of Charleston, South Carolina, in the Richmond theater the night of the fire. In the paragraphs that follow, I will look into the perspectives on the fire presented by three Presbyterian ministers considered in Baker’s book.
Alexander’s sermon was delivered in Pine Street Church in Philadelphia, and then published in a pamphlet titled, A Discourse Occasioned by the Burning of the Theatre in the City of Richmond, Virginia. His text was the second half of Romans 12:15, “Weep with them that weep.” After several pages of compassionate comments and encouragement directed to those in mourning, he transitioned into the subject of worldly amusements. Alexander expressed reluctance to broach the topic but since some had asked him to do so, he made a few comments that fill less than two pages. He did not target the theater in particular but worldly amusements in general commenting that they were “unfriendly to piety.” Then, he began an extended section pointing out the brevity of life, the importance of Christian commitment, the need to avoid temptation, and the requirement of heavenly minded thinking. The overall tone of the discourse is pastoral and Alexander is reserved in his comments about entertainment. His primary concern was to bring comfort to his listeners as they lived through the fire’s aftermath, challenge Christians to commit to better service for the Lord, and call the unbelieving to faith.
Samuel Miller delivered his sermon to a group of “young gentlemen” at their request. He was specifically asked to include in his discourse comments about theatrical entertainments. He was, like Alexander, reluctant to do so, but again like Alexander, he addressed the issue. The two verses he selected for exposition were Lamentations 2:1, 13.