[Jordan Piershalski]

I thought this statement was very pertinent to Thoreau’s works in writing and I thought I’d expound on it:“When discussing Christianity he (Thoreau) also discusses how society has corrupted his religion.”

To what extent Thoreau would actually call himself a devout christian I don’t know; I believe for the most part, Thoreau invokes religious allusions to comment on the prevalent christian ethos in America and the disparity between the virtues that are implicit within the religion and the actions of the american “christians” that adhere to the doctrine.

This disparity is made audibly explicit in Thoreau’s lecture A plea for Captain John Brown. The piece was written and spoken during a time of national condemnation of the ardent and violent abolitionist John Brown, the reason for his criticism and execution being his raid on Harper’s Ferry. Thoreau, also an avid abolitionist, attempted to find admirable vestiges of virtue in Brown’s actions, despite the fact that he did not condone his violence. Within the lecture, Thoreau points out the paradox of christian thought in supporting slavery, and sentencing  someone to death who sought to stop this subjugation. “You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the savior of four millions of men.”

Thoreau also brings this hypocrisy to light within the chapter Visitors in Walden when he discusses a runaway slave who comes upon his humble abode. “runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say,— “O Christian, will you send me back”(Thoreau 114)? Firstly, Thoreau’s allusion is in reference to the fable of The Fox and the Cat, the former of the two being the one who is killed in the end. Secondly, their is an irony to the slave’s question, for it shouldn’t have to be asked, a good christian should have no reluctance to take him in, a good christian should have no inclination to enslave him. In a way his question is nearly equivalent to Cain answering God “I know not; am I my brother’s keeper?”(Genesis 4:9) The slave in a way asking, are you your brother’s keeper?

Clara also mentioned: “He (Thoreau) strongly believed in God’s law and thought it was more important and stronger than state laws.” Although, I believe that Thoreau saw the two as being intertwined, seeing as the purveyors of the laws of the state were themselves christian. Further on in A plea for Captain John Brown Thoreau lays bare the relationship between the church and the agents of the state, and why he did not recognize the government of the United States. “The only government that I recognize,–and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army,–is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!”

Christ’s crucifixion is common ground for Thoreau while in argument, seeing as it is referenced twice in his John Brown lecture and twice in his essay on civil disobedience Resistance to Civil Government. “(In regards to the fault of the government)Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?” Thoreau believes that America, which was spawned out of the insurrection of the oppressed remained an oppressor through slavery; Thoreau finds America duplicitous in its praise of those who spat in the face of subjugation at the hands of the British yet salivated at the chance to subjugate slaves.

Let us now look at Thoreau’s use of the famous bible passage: render unto Caesar, spoken by Jesus in the synoptic gospels within Resistance to Civil Government.

“The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. “Show me the tribute-money,” said he;- and one took a penny out of his pocket;- if you use money which has the image of Caesar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of Caesar’s government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it. “Render therefore to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and to God those things which are God’s”- leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know.”

This biblical passage demonstrates an early rendition of the separation of church and state. Seeing as there were also slaves in Rome, Thoreau’s criticism would have been pertinent at that time as well. If a christian pays taxes to a government he condones the actions of that government. However, based on the virtues of  Christianity, a citizen should have an obligation as God’s child to supersede the government’s enslavement of his brother, not condone its actions.

Thoreau put this belief into practice in the chapter  The Village within Walden by refusing to pay a poll tax to “the state which buys and sells men, women, and children like cattle at the door of its senate house” (Thoreau 111). This action is the embodiment of the concept of civil disobedience which Thoreau coined the name of. Nevertheless, Thoreau’s resistance was not solely shown to the state, he demonstrated the same disdain to a church that his father had attended, that he had not paid tithe to. “Some years ago, the State met me in behalf of the Church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. “Pay,” it said, “or be locked up in the jail.” I declined to pay…. I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:- “Know all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined.”

Statements such as these found in Resistance against Civil Government as well as those within a Plea for Captain John Brown and Walden exhibit Thoreau’s unyielding affinity for his moral beliefs and refusal to resign those beliefs to any religious doctrine or government for that matter.

 

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