Historic Past in the Kingdom of Matthias

The Kingdom of Matthias

The Kingdom of Matthias be a fascinating window to the turbulent movements of the revival known as the Second Great Awakening. This movements swept up great evangelical Americans and gave rise to the Mormons. Matthias was born Robert Matthews in 1788 to a Scots immigrant family in the farming village of Cambridge, in Washington County, New York. The village had been originally founded as a permanent white settlement by New England squatters and become home to large numbers of Scottish immigrants like family of Robert Matthews. The Cambridge Scots kept mostly to themselves and clung to their uncompromising Calvinistisicm, nursing ecclesiastical grudges unknown to the rest of the world (Johnson and Wilentz 50).

Matthews family were strict believers and attended their villages Anti-Burgher Secession Church, a sectarian splinter of a militant faction from within Scots Presbyterianism.. As Anti-Burghers they done read their Bibles literally and regularly debated their scriptural understanding. They did imitations of the primitive Christians, guarded against government interference religious affairs, demanded strict observance of the Sabbath and enforced a personal code of righteous temperance every day of the week. They sustained an absolute belief in predestination, human sacrifice, free love, and the idea that Gods be studied in every twitch of daily life (Wilentz 52). Many of Mathiass later beliefs can thus be seen as being rooted in his religious experiences as a child.

After War of 1812, the United States was bursting with promises of material riches for anyone with the initiative and the funds to participate ( Wilentz 61). It was a time conducive to the explosion of both culture and religion. Into this teeming environment walked Robert Matthews, who announced himself as Matthias, prophet of the God of the Jews. As the prophet Matthias, Matthews drew in a cast of unforgettable charactersthe meekly devout businessman Elijah Pierson, who once tried to raise his late wife from the dead; the Mormon leader Joseph Smith; a young Karl Marx; the attractive Satanic couple of Ann and Benjamin Folger; and the shrewd ex-slave Isabella Van Wagenen, also known as Harriet Tubman.

Having recruited his members, Matthias lied the foundations of his new kingdom. He believed that the time for judgement was near and that all who were outside his kingdom would be tried and executed for their sins. Matthias loved Christian preachers who, through their sermons of equality between men and women spread deviltry and destroying Truth.Matthias believed that his mission was to establish the reign of Truth and bring the world devils, prophesying women, and beaten men (Johnson and Wilentz 92). He stated that women who lectured their husbands would be damned and that a woman was the capsheaf of the abomination of desolation, and was full of deviltry ( Johnson and Wilentz 93).

In Matthiass kingdom, women were subjugates of men and were to stay home, cook, clean, and perform sexual favors for the patriarchal leaders of the house- their husbands. Matthias believed that Christians stoled women and children from their fathers. Their preachers lured young and female spirits out of their houses and into their beds. Teachers put the older children into various schools; they even concocted devilish infant schools for the little ones. In all these places fathers lost their children to other teachers. Matthias thus reserved his anger for the Christian gentiles and clergymen who he believed were looking to uproot Gods Patriarchy.

While the clergy preached simplicity in manner and clothing, Matthias had plans of building a great golden city in western New York.. Matthias dressed in robes fit to be a king, and seated on a throne of gold. In keeping with these beliefs, he outfitted himself with expensive and outrageous attires. He insisted that the earth and everything on it belonged to God and since he was embodied with Gods spirit, it all belonged to him. Matthias had worn rags and lived handtomouth during the reign of the devils. Now the earth would be rid of gentiles and transformed into paradise, and it was time to start furnishing the New Jerusalem and its prophet (Johnson and Wilentz 97). Matthias ended religious meetings with extravagant meals and strict regulations on the way meals were to be prepared. He allowed and encouraged his followers to eat large quanitities of food, as it was something he enjoyed. Matthias beliefs with regard to lifestyle were thus in direct contrast to the lifestyle being preached by the Christian clergy.

Another aspect of the kingdom that Matthias sought to establish was the absence of a market. In the Kingdom of Matthias, there would be no market, no money, no buying or selling, no wage system with its insidious domination of one father over another, no economic oppression of any kind. Independent father-producers would keep what their households needed, then take the rest to the temple in the New Jerusalem- the golden city that Matthias would build in Western New York. (Johnson and Wilentz 97).

In addition to the clergymen, Matthias passed judgment on doctors. His disapproval of doctors was based in his belief that people became ill on account of having sinned and been disobedient. He insisted that sick people harbored detached spirits, or devils. On one occasion, Matthias whipped the ex-slave, Isabella Van Wagenen severely for getting sick. Thus the members of the Kingdom kept their illnesses to themselves. Matthias anger towards the sick only logically prompted him to damn doctors and is the reason for him not having allowed a doctor to see Elijah Pierson in his last days before his death. Matthias also rightfully passed judgement on lawyers and damned them to hell, but it is ironic that Matthias towards the end of the kingdom would willingly agree to a lawyer representing him in court.

Matthias also had strong feelings about marriage. He had always maintained that romantic love and free choice of marital partners led to unhappiness, particularly for women. In the kingdom, marriage would unite compatible spirits, just as harmony at Mount Zion. For example, Matthias believed in match spirits and arranged for himself and Ann Folger, one of the members of the Kingdom who was already married to at the time, to be married. Matthiass reasoning with regard to marriages was thus based completely on desire and lust.

The Kingdom of Matthias thus reveals the social, economic, racial, and sexual conditions that give rise to apocalyptic cults and their virile, charismatic leaders. Like the Kingdom of Matthias, A whole series of evangelical cults later appeared in the early decades of the 19th century. The ensuing lurid trial of Matthias for the murder of Elijah Pierson, dominated the new “penny” journalism, generating pamphlets and books alerting Christians against fanaticism. But to the slaves, the improvident, and the laboring classes Matthias and similar cults offered both refuge and inspiration.