Thursday, September 25, 2025

It is the 25th of September 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

The story of the spread of the gospel in the 19th century takes two predominant arcs- one is the growth of world missions into Africa and the Far East. These stories of intrepid explorers have long grabbed our attention with names like Carey, Judson, and Livingston.

The second group is no less colorful and tells the story of the church in North America spreading westward into the frontier- this is the “Second Great Awakening” and the story of the circuit riders that would set the stage for the growth of a particular American evangelicalism into the next century.

And central to this story is the man whose Autobiography would create the template for the rugged American individualist and circuit-riding preacher: Peter Cartwright.

Much of what we know, or think we know, of Cartwright comes from his 1856 work, the Autobiography of Peter Cartwright: The Backwoods Preacher. Writing late in life and by his own account, without having kept records or journals, we might not expect historical precision- but that doesn’t seem to be the purview of the work. Instead, it helped create a model for Christians in the growing American West who didn’t see themselves as descendants of New England Blue Bloods or of the august old world denominations. This was the template for a new kind of distinctly American evangelicalism. 

By his own account, he was the descendant of Revolutionaries, born in 1785; his family moved westward into the so-called “Rogue's Harbor” or the Kentucky Territory. With shades of Augustine’s autobiography, Cartwright tells the story of his wayward youth ruled by his senses until his mother's prayers prevail and he came to faith at the famed Cane Ridge Meetings of 1801. Called “America’s Pentecost,” these meetings did much to spread evangelical fervor across the West, even if they were accompanied, to the chagrin of some, with ecstatic expressions called “the jerks”. Cartwright was not opposed to all of the supposed excesses of the movement but was critical of some of the more radical expressions.

He would join the Methodist Episcopal Church and was, by his account, pressed into ministry as early as 17, eventually being ordained. His stories paint him as a character part John Wesley, part Paul Bunyan. His stories have him traversing the Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio regions on horseback with a bible, hymnal, and Methodist Book of Discipline. He is reported to have engaged with the famous frontier character Mike Fink- the man called “half horse and half alligator”, the “King of the Keelboaters”, and a renowned brawler. Cartwright himself would warn that some of the stories were exaggerations, but didn’t bother to squash them completely. His was a rugged faith, a kind of ‘muscular Christianity’ that appealed to the newly self-conscious American frontiersman.

Another likely apocryphal story that spread about Cartwright was that he was preaching during a service when General- soon to be President Andrew Jackson was present and Cartwright refused to defer to his rank, but was told that he too must repent or God would damn him as fast as he would any pagan. Jackson, of course, is said to have admired the moxie of the youthful preacher from Kentucky.

Cartwright does have a documented history with Abraham Lincoln. Concerned about the spread of slavery, Cartwright moved to Illinois, where in 1830 he ran against Lincoln and won a seat in the state Legislature. They would face each other again in 1846 over a congressional seat, and Lincoln would prevail. The stories about the two, despite some mythological embellishments, would help to establish Lincoln as an heir of the merging American identity of evangelical fervor and rugged individualism.  

Peter Cartwright and his Autobiography would create the template of the Western Circuit rider- preaching some 15,000 sermons by horseback and recording 10s of thousands of baptisms. Cartwright would die near Pleasant Plains, Illinois, on this, the 25th of September in 1872. Born in 1785, he was 87 years old.

 The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Psalm 91:

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High
    will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,

    my God, in whom I trust.”

Surely he will save you

    from the fowler’s snare

    and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers,

    and under his wings you will find refuge;

    his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night,

    nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

    nor the plague that destroys at midday.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 25th of September 2025, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man still wondering how somebody was half horse, half alligator, and which half would be which… he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who might suggest both fully horse and fully alligator, so as not to upset any orthodoxies… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.