https://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=1447
Atheism and Liberal, Missouri
In
the summer of 1880, George H. Walser founded the town of Liberal in
southwest Missouri. Named after the Liberal League in Lamar, Missouri
(to which the town’s organizer belonged), Walser’s objective was “to
found a town without a church, [w]here unbelievers could bring up their
children without religious training,” and where Christians were not
allowed (Thompson, 1895; Becker, 1895). “His idea was to build up a town
that should exclusively be the home of Infidels...a town that should
have neither God, Hell, Church, nor Saloon” (Brand, 1895). Some of the
early inhabitants of Liberal even encouraged other infidels to move to
their town by publishing an advertisement which boasted that Liberal “is
the only town of its size in the United States without a priest,
preacher, church, saloon, God, Jesus, hell or devil” (Keller, 1885, p.
5). Walser and his “freethinking” associates were openly optimistic
about their new town. Excitement was in the air, and atheism was at its
core. They believed that their godless town of “sober, trustworthy and
industrious” individuals would thrive for years on end. But, as one
young resident of that town, Bessie Thompson, wrote about Liberal in
1895, “...like all other unworthy causes, it had its day and passed
away.” Bessie did not mean that the actual town of Liberal ceased to
exist, but that the idea of having a “good, godless” city is a
contradiction in terms. A town built upon “trustworthy” atheistic ideals
eventually will reek of the rotten, immoral fruits of infidelity. Such
fruits were witnessed and reported firsthand by Clark Braden in 1885.
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Saturday, May 2, 1885 |
Braden was an experienced preacher, debater, and author. In his
lifetime, he presented more than 3,000 lectures, and held more than 130
regular debates—eighteen of which were with the Mormons (Carpenter,
1909, pp. 324-325). In 1872, Braden even challenged the renowned
agnostic Robert Ingersoll to debate, to which Ingersoll reportedly
responded, “I am not such a fool as to debate. He would wear me out”
(Haynes, 1915, pp. 481-482). Although Braden was despised by some, his
skills in writing and public speaking were widely known and
acknowledged. In February 1885, Clark Braden introduced himself to the
townspeople of Liberal (Keller, 1885, p. 5; Moore, 1963, p. 38), and
soon thereafter he wrote about what he had seen.
In an article that appeared in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 2, 1885, titled “An Infidel Experiment,” Braden reported the following.
The boast about the sobriety of the town is false. But few of the
infidels are total abstainers. Liquor can be obtained at three different
places in this town of 300 inhabitants. More drunken infidels can be
seen in a year in Liberal than drunken Christians among one hundred
times as many church members during the same time. Swearing is the
common form of speech in Liberal, and nearly every inhabitant, old and
young, swears habitually. Girls and boys swear on the streets,
playground, and at home. Fully half of the females will swear, and a
large number swear habitually.... Lack of reverence for parents and of
obedience to them is the rule. There are more grass widows, grass
widowers and people living together, who have former companions living,
than in any other town of ten times the population.... A good portion of
the few books that are read are of the class that decency keeps under
lock and key....
These infidels...can spend for dances and shows ten times as much as
they spend on their liberalism. These dances are corrupting the youth of
the surrounding country with infidelity and immorality. There is no
lack of loose women at these dances.
Since Liberal was started there has not been an average of one birth
per year of infidel parents. Feticide is universal. The physicians of
the place say that a large portion of their practice has been trying to
save females from consequences of feticide. In no town is slander more
prevalent, or the charges more vile. If one were to accept what the
inhabitants say of each other, he would conclude that there is a hell,
including all Liberal, and that its inhabitants are the devils (as
quoted in Keller, 1885, p. 5).
According to Braden, “[s]uch are the facts concerning this infidel
paradise.... Every one who has visited Liberal, and knows the facts,
knows that such is the case” (p. 5).
As one can imagine, Braden’s comments did not sit well with some of the
townspeople of Liberal. In fact, a few days after Braden’s observations
appeared in the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, he was arrested for
criminal libel and tried on May 18, 1885. According to Braden, “After
the prosecution had presented their evidence, the case was submitted to
the jury without any rebutting evidence by the defence (sic), and the
jury speedily brought in a verdict of ‘No cause for action’ ” (as quoted
in Mouton, n.d., pp. 36-37). Unfortunately for Braden, however, the
controversy was not over. On the following day (May 19, 1885), a civil
suit was filed by one of the townsmen—S.C. Thayer, a hotel operator in
Liberal. The petition for damages of $25,000 alleged that Clark Braden
and the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an article in which
they had made false, malicious, and libelous statements against the
National Hotel in Liberal, managed by Mr. Thayer. He claimed that
Braden’s remarks, published in the
St. Louise Post-Dispatch on
May 2, 1885, “greatly and irreparably injured and ruined” his business
(Thayer v. Braden). However, when the prosecution learned that the
defense was thoroughly prepared to prove that Liberal was a den of
infamy, and that its hotels were little more than houses of
prostitution, the suit was dismissed on September 17, 1886 by the
plaintiff
at his own cost (Thayer v. Braden). Braden was
exonerated in everything he had written. Indeed, the details Braden
originally reported about Liberal, Missouri, on May 2, 1885 were found
to be completely factual.
It took only a few short years for Liberal’s unattractiveness and
inconsistency to be exposed. People cannot exclude God from the
equation, and expect to remain a “sober, trustworthy” town. Godlessness
equals unruliness, which in turn makes a repugnant, immoral people. The
town of Liberal was a failure. Only five years after its establishment,
Braden indicated that “[n]ine-tenths of those now in town would leave if
they could sell their property. More property has been lost by locating
in the town than has been made in it.... Hundreds have been deceived
and injured and ruined financially” (Keller, p. 5). Apparently, “doing
business with the devil” did not pay the kind of dividends George Walser
(the town’s founder) and the early inhabitants of Liberal desired. It
appears that even committed atheists found living in Liberal in the
early days intolerable. Truly, as has been observed in the past, “An
infidel surrounded by Christians may spout his infidelity and be able to
endure it, but a whole town of atheists is too horrible to
contemplate.” It is one thing to espouse a desire to live in a place
where there is no God, but it is an entirely different thing for such a
place actually to exist. For it to become a reality is more than the
atheist can handle. Adolf Hitler took atheism to its logical conclusion
in Nazi Germany, and created a world that even most atheists detested.
Although atheists want no part of living according to the standards set
out by Jesus and His apostles in the New Testament, the real fruits of
evolutionary atheism also are too horrible for them to contemplate.
Although
the town of Liberal still exists today (with a population of about 800
people), and although vestiges of its atheistic heritage are readily
apparent, it is not the same town it was in 1895. At present, at least
seven religious groups associated with Christianity exist within this
city that once banned Christianity and all that it represents. Numerous
other churches meet in the surrounding areas. According to one of the
religious leaders in the town, “a survey of Liberal recently indicated
that 50% of the people are actively involved with some church” (Abbott,
2003)—a far cry from where Liberal began.
There is no doubt that the moral, legal, and educational systems of
Liberal, Missouri, in the twenty-first century are the fruits of
biblical teaching, not atheism. When Christianity and all of the ideals
that the New Testament teaches are effectively put into action, people
will value human life, honor their parents, respect their neighbors, and
live within the moral guidelines given by God in the Bible. A city
comprised of faithful Christians would be mostly void of such horrors as
sexually transmitted diseases, murder, drunken fathers who beat their
wives and children, drunk drivers who turn automobiles into lethal
weapons, and heartache caused by such things as divorce, adultery, and
covetousness. (Only those who broke God’s commandments intended for
man’s benefit would cause undesirable fruit to be reaped.)
On the other hand, when atheism and all of its tenets are taken to
their logical conclusion, people will reap some of the same miserable
fruit once harvested by the early citizens of Liberal, Missouri (and
sadly, some of the same fruit being reaped by many cities in the world
today). Men and women will attempt to cover up sexual sins by aborting
babies, children will disrespect their parents, students will “run wild”
at home and in school because of the lack of discipline, and “sexual
freedom” (which leads to sexually transmitted diseases) will be valued,
whereas human life will be devalued. Such are the fruits of atheism: a
society in which everyone does that which is right in his own eyes
(Judges 17:6)—a society in which no sensible person wants to live.
REFERENCES
Abbott, Phil (2003), Christian Church, Liberal, Missouri, telephone conversation, April 7.
Barnes, Pamela (2003),
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, telephone conversation, March 12.
Becker, Hathe (1895), “Liberal,”
Liberal Enterprise, December 5,12, [On-line],
URL: http://lyndonirwin.com/libhist1.htm.
Brand, Ida (1895), “Liberal,”
Liberal Enterprise, December 5,12, [On-line],
URL: http://lyndonirwin.com/libhist1.htm.
Carpenter, L.L. (1909), “The President’s Address,” in
Centennial Convention Report, ed. W.R. Warren, (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company), pp. 317-332. [On-line],
URL: http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/wwarren/ccr/CCR15B.HTM.
Haynes, Nathaniel S. (1915),
History of the Disciples of Christ in Illinois 1819-1914 (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company), [On-line],
URL: http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/nhaynes/hdcib/braden01.htm, 1996.
Keller, Samuel (1885), “An Infidel Experiment,”
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Special Correspondence with Clark Braden, May 2, p. 5.
Moore, J.P. (1963),
This Strange Town—Liberal, Missouri (Liberal, MO: The Liberal News).
Mouton, Boyce (no date),
George H. Walser and Liberal, Missouri: An Historical Overview.
Thayer, S.C. v. Clark Braden, et. al. Filed on May 19, 1885 in Barton County Missouri. Dismissed September 10, 1886.
Thompson, Bessie (1895), “Liberal,”
Liberal Enterprise, December 5,12, [On-line],
URL: http://lyndonirwin.com/libhist1.htm.
