The village of Newville is situated in the scenic Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania, about eleven miles west of Carlisle. The region was settled by Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland who moved west because they felt disenfranchised by the eastern elite and dominance of the Church of England, as well as the Quakers. Two years after Newville was incorporated, Thomas Verner was born February 1, 1818, the second child of John and Rachel (McCullough) Moore.
Thomas’s early education was provided by his mother and local pastors. Formal studies began at Hanover College, IN, but after a year he transferred to a school closer to home, Dickinson College in Carlisle. He graduated with honors in 1838, then considered his next step to prepare for the ministry. Living dead center between Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh and Princeton in New Jersey, he chose the latter. At that time, the faculty included Samuel Miller, Archibald Alexander, Charles Hodge, J. A. Alexander, and briefly, John Breckinridge.
Politics became a topic of discussion on campus because of the presidential election of 1840, which set the incumbent Martin Van Buren, Democrat from New York, against the Whig candidate, William Henry Harrison of Virginia. Van Buren was viewed by some as an aloof Dutch aristocrat, while General Harrison’s campaign revived Andrew Jackson’s common-man appeal. The Whigs called Harrison the “log cabin and hard cider” candidate. Moore’s temperance commitment prevented him from supporting such a candidate (who ended up winning), which left Van Buren as Moore’s reluctant choice.
During the course of theological studies, he had been influenced by Archibald Alexander’s enthusiasm for the African colonization movement for free blacks. So, after receiving his seminary certificate, he became a fundraiser for the Pennsylvania Colonization Society.
However, Moore would no longer work for the Colonization Society when its settlement on the west coast of Africa became the Republic of Liberia in 1847. He left the organization after only a short time because he was disenchanted with the movement’s chance for success, and he was feeling a renewed sense of call to pulpit ministry. He accepted a call from Second Presbyterian Church, Carlisle.
Just seven years earlier, Second Presbyterian had been organized as a particular church by the Presbytery of Carlisle with seventy-seven members from First Church. When Second constructed its church, it was situated across the town square from First. It was said that members of one congregation would pass members from the other congregation on their way to worship and not speak to each other. Into this unsettled situation novice pastor Moore served his first ministerial call. After a four-year tenure in which Moore was discouraged by schism caused by disagreements among the Carlisle elders and the congregation, he sought to demit the ministry. The presbytery worked with the church while encouraging Moore to continue ministry and resolve the issues, but in the end a call to another church was deemed necessary. His pastoral relationship was dissolved, and then he accepted a call to the Greencastle Church. He was installed on May 15, 1845, but the tenure was brief because he soon accepted a pastorate requiring relocation of his family from Pennsylvania to First Presbyterian Church in Richmond, VA.
Before Moore took this call, William Swan Plumer had been minister of First Presbyterian for twelve years when he resigned early in 1847 to accept a call from the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church in Baltimore, MD. It would be difficult for Moore to fill Plumer’s shoes given the great respect the congregation had for him; one family in the church went as far as to name their son William Swan Plumer Mayo. After failed attempts to call Benjamin M. Smith and Stuart Robinson, the session invited Moore to “visit the congregation and preach as long as may be agreeable to him with the view on the part of the Session, if the way be clear, to call him to pastor the church” (Minutes, Jul. 7, 1847).
It did not take the elders long to recognize their interest in him once they heard him preach. A congregational meeting was soon held, and a call was enthusiastically offered. Moore accepted the opportunity to serve one of the largest Presbyterian churches in Virginia. He was not only motivated to move to Virginia because of the difficulties he worked through in Carlisle, but he had grown to appreciate the greater enthusiasm for republican government exhibited by southerners. He was installed Sunday evening, November 28, 1847, by a commission that included Benjamin Gildersleeve, John Leyburn, and Moses D. Hoge. Moore was dutiful in his calling and soon earned the respect of not only his congregation but also the people of the region as a kind pastor, fine preacher, dutiful churchman, and concerned citizen.
In the antebellum Presbyterian Church, both the offices of elder and deacon were subjects for debate in terms of discerning from Scripture the natures and duties of these offices. During Moore’s ministry in 1858, the session organized the elders and deacons into a team ministry serving the congregation. The action was likely prompted by Moore as a result of his reading Thomas Chalmers’s works about subdividing the Tron Parish in Glasgow. A committee had been appointed to establish geographic boundaries for each of five districts constituting the city of Richmond. The population of the city then was roughly 38,000, including 12,000 enslaved persons. If it were not for the association of the word “parish” with episcopacy, the districts could have been called parishes. Each of the districts was to be served by two elders and a minimum of one deacon. Districts 1 and 5 each had two deacons while the other three districts had only one, so it appears that districts with two deacons required more mercy ministry due to more poor households (Minutes, May 3, 1858). This aspect of the work of First Church not only indicates a great sense of the spiritual ministry of officers, both elders and deacons, but also the importance of a team ministry with both offices serving together. Further, would some of the tension that sometimes occurs between sessions and diaconates today be reduced if the two worked together more often?
Moore accepted the opportunity to serve one of the largest Presbyterian churches in Virginia.
The First Church elders reported at session meetings regarding not only their visits to members in their districts but also about those who had been attending church and were not members (Minutes, Jun. 7, Aug. 5, 1858). The districts also facilitated Moore’s method of catechizing, which, according to Moses D. Hoge, was “the good old Scottish fashion, districting the congregation in the interests of efficiency and at stated times gathering the children of a neighborhood for an examination in the Catechism” (Downtown, 247). Unfortunately, there is no further information in the minutes about how successful the district system was in addressing the needs of the congregation, or if greater harmony was facilitated between deacons and elders.
The years at First Church leading up to the Civil War were Moore’s most fruitful years of ministry. He continued delivering lectures and sermons on special occasions, with some published in pamphlets and journals. Two books of continuing significance were The Prophets of the Restoration, or Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, 1856, which was highly praised by J. A. Alexander and other contemporaries. Then he published The Last Days of Jesus, 1858, which is a series of sermons about the appearances of the Lord during the forty days between the resurrection and ascension. Moore and his friend Moses D. Hoge purchased the financially strapped serial, The Watchman of the South, then renamed it The Central Presbyterian and commenced publication January 5, 1856, with both owners contributing often to its columns—but most were unsigned. Moore’s work was enjoying great blessings from the Lord during fourteen years of ministry when secession and war between the states began.
When the Civil War started in 1861, the city of Richmond experienced a dramatic transformation. Within weeks, Richmond became the capital of the Confederacy as well as continuing to be the Virginia capital. As the war progressed, the prisoners filled the prisons to overflowing, while the Union wounded packed hospitals. T. V. Moore was not officially a chaplain, but, to the consternation of some members of his congregation, he often visited soldiers in the hospitals, whether Confederate or Union, as well as Union prisoners. The war was political, and as a minister, he was providing spiritual service; he had to be colorblind to the soldiers’ uniforms and race or ethnicity because each was a sinner needing Christ.
Moore’s connection to Pennsylvania led to friends and relatives sending him letters seeking help for their kin and friends in Richmond’s prisons and hospitals. He would loan money to the sick and imprisoned based on their promise of repayment, but repayment did not occur very often. The son of James H. Thornwell was wounded during the Battle of Williamsburg, May 1862, so the Moores provided a room in the manse for convalescence until his parents came and took him home. As the war continued, Richmond became increasingly chaotic as the hub of the Confederacy with traffic including troops on the move, freight wagons, boats on the James River, and train traffic on five railroad lines that served the city. The collapsing economy led to bread riots, thievery, and dysfunctional infrastructure. One brief notice in a newspaper by T. V. Moore sought the return of Mrs. Moore’s coat, stolen from his yard where it was drying. Then a paper reported the theft of home-canned foods from the cellar of the manse.
Every Sunday at First Church there were visitors— soldiers passing through town, government officials from other states, wounded soldiers, and others just making their way to some place away from the conflict. The end of the war was welcome as it relieved some of the pressures, but much of the city had been destroyed by fire, food was in short supply, and the Union Army was in control.
The years between Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and Moore’s death in 1871 saw little literary output by him except for the little book, The Culdee Church, published in 1868, a reprint of a series of articles from The Central Presbyterian. The milder weather that he enjoyed so much when he first moved to Richmond had become too harsh for him. When the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States convened in 1867 in Nashville, TN, Moore was elected moderator, and he supplied the pulpit in First Church, giving the congregation opportunity to hear him preach. Moore was given a call, accepted it, and welcomed the transition to what he believed would be a milder climate following his installation on January 17, 1869. However, even in Nashville, Moore had to find haven in Florida during the winters.
T. V. Moore died on August 5, 1871. The cause of death was likely tuberculosis contracted while ministering to the wounded and imprisoned in Richmond. He is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Nashville, with the brief sentiment, “In hope of a better resurrection,” which loosely adapts the end of Hebrews 11:35. Despite the instructions to his survivors to purchase a simple and small marker with a brief inscription, instead an obelisk roughly twelve feet high marks the grave. He was survived by his second wife, Matilda Cummings Gwathmey—his first wife, Sarah Blythe, having died shortly after bearing a child. In 1853, Moore was honored with the Doctor of Divinity by his alma mater, Dickinson College.
Selected Writings on Government, Civil and Ecclesiastical
T. V. Moore published over sixty reviews, poems, articles, sermons, and lectures, particularly during the antebellum years on republican civil government and Presbyterian church government. The following four presentations of publications provide insight into his thought.
(1) When the Synod of Philadelphia gathered in Lewistown, PA in 1844, Moore had been previously appointed to deliver the sermon. His text was a portion of Galatians 5:1, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” The subject of freedom was timely given the civil issue of a presidential election coming up in November between Whig-Kentuckian Henry Clay and Democrat-Tennessean James K. Polk. There was also an ecclesiastical problem of concern to Presbyterian leaders called the Oxford Movement, which began in 1833 at Oxford University in what became a successful attempt to redirect the Church of England away from its historically Protestant doctrines and toward the high church aspects of Roman Catholicism, including vestments and the centrality of communion at the expense of the Scriptures in worship services. The movement was highly effective due to its publication of a series of pamphlets called Tracts for the Times, which spread its views in Great Britain, as well as influenced the United States. Moore’s timely discourse impressed the synod members sufficiently that it was published in The Presbyterian under the title, “Relative Influence of Presbytery and Prelacy on Civil and Ecclesiastical Liberty.” The sermon filled the front page of the November 16, 1844 issue.
The distinction between a republic and a democracy is that the former involves direct involvement of the people through representatives, while in a democracy, sovereignty is directly exercised by the people. In both civil and church governments, Moore believed that the government that brings the greatest liberty is the one that brings the most rights to its members— not the most personal benefits, but rather the greatest personal rights. Since Presbyterian church government provides rights for its members as they are shepherded by elders selected from among their congregations, and they are representative of their interests through the courts of the church, it corresponds that republican government in the political realm is paralleled in Presbyterian polity and its leadership by elders. For Moore, episcopacy, which was enjoying new adherents due to influence from the Oxford Movement, manifests the tyranny of the few, and much of his sermon is a rehearsal of historical examples of bishops and other clerics who abused their power and sought their own well being. But for Presbyterians, there is recourse for Christians against abuse through their elders, whether in the local session or the greater assemblies of the church.
Moore points out that tyranny in any form is the result of sin, whether it is the tyranny of sin over the individual, the tyranny of political rulers over their people, or the tyranny of church leaders over their congregations. He said, “Tyranny never has existed and never can exist without sin as its cause, and the removal of the cause is the only effectual mode of removing the effect,” to which was added, “there is no permanent basis for liberty in any department of action but Christianity.” It is necessary for one to be freed from the bondage of sin if one is to exercise liberty within political government or church government. However, Paul’s concern in the Galatians text was to rebuke the Judaizers’ continued use of circumcision as clinging to the old covenant and not fully assimilating the liberating grace of the new covenant shown in Christ. Yes, tyranny is a result of sin, as Moore said, but it is a mistake to take the Galatians text as a blanket condemnation of tyranny when Paul’s context was concerned with refuting theological error in the Apostolic church. Moore was not the first nor would he be the last preacher to use a Bible text to launch into a topical sermon while failing to consider the uniqueness of the verse within its context and its singular message. Despite Moore’s dubious use of Paul, the points he makes in the sermon are beneficial.
Moore parallels the authority structures of ecclesiastical and political governments. The papacy is monarchy, episcopacy is oligarchy, Presbyterianism is republicanism, and congregationalism is democracy. For him, republican church government is Presbyterian rule by elders who oversee their flocks and represent them in the higher courts of presbytery, synod (in some denominations), and general assembly. Is the nature of representation by elders simply a religious version of that accomplished by political legislators? In government, the senators and representatives constituting legislatures are charged with expressing the will of their constituents at the local, state, or national level, so if there is full direct correlation between civil and church republicanism, one would expect direct correlation with what elders do for their flocks in the church. This is the way many Presbyterians understand the parallel between Presbyterian and republican systems of government. But is this understanding correct?
Civil legislators represent the will of their constituents in the legislative process, but elders are instruments of the Lord for the spiritual direction of their sheep to grow in grace. Elders represent their congregations in church courts by their attendance at court meetings for the church, not because they are instruments of the people representing their will. To put it bluntly, elders—that is shepherds—direct their sheep; the sheep do not direct their shepherds. If congregants did direct the elders, would the church not be functionally congregational in its government? As elders make decisions in any church court, they do so as shepherds interpreting the word for application to an issue among the sheep. The position of elders in a session regarding any issue may coincide with the preponderant view of the congregation, but even if the congregants are in substantial disagreement with the session, the elders must hold to their view because they believe it is the best expression of “thus saith the Lord” regarding the issue. This does not mean elders disregard opinions and questions from the congregation because a good shepherd is not domineering over the flock (1 Peter 5:3). The elder’s care differs from a legislator holding a town meeting to determine the will of the district concerning an issue, then representing the district’s majority view in legislative sessions. Liberty in the church is achieved best within a Presbyterian polity, while liberty for citizens is best achieved with republican government guarding the rights of citizens.
Even though education is essential for the nation’s future, if it is not built on an appropriate foundation, it will fail—both the head and the heart must be taught.
(2) Less than a year after becoming pastor of the Greencastle congregation in 1846, his continued interest in republican government resulted in “Republican Tendency of the Bible,” which was published in The Methodist Quarterly Review. Moore says that a republic must have certain essential elements to prosper and persevere. For example, the character of the citizens themselves must be good. Referring to Matthew 12, he commented that if the tree is good, then the fruit also will be good. Good laws and institutions are necessary for a republic, and good citizens are more likely to make good laws, but good laws alone cannot produce good citizens. Since the best societies, Moore adds, are those which are predominantly Christian, then it follows that the Bible provides the best source for directing a republic. Moore was not saying the Bible is a handbook for republican government, but as his article’s title expressed it, the Bible’s tendency is to teach principles conducive to effective representative government with a concern for the common good.
Turning to the Old Testament and Israel, he observed that Israel, a “Hebrew commonwealth, though a theocracy in its relation to God, was, in its relations to man, nothing more or less than a confederated republic, very similar to the United States” (“Republican Tendency of the Bible,” 220). He pointed out that the tribes of Israel had individual governments, with each tribe having “a chief magistrate or judge,” which corresponds with the president in the United States; “the senate or Sanhedrin of elders,” which is similar to the federal senate; and “the congregation of Israel, or national diet,” which he says resembles the local and particular representative character of the house of representatives (“Republican Tendency of the Bible,” 220). Even though the correlation of governing bodies between Israel and the United States is not perfect, the fundamental republican idea of responsible parties represented equitably for the common good is present. In Israel, the self-rule of the Hebrews was subordinated to the theocratic rule by the Lord as he spoke through the prophets and Scripture, but as Moore noted, the Bible contains the best law, and true Christians should be the best citizens. So, the Bible tends towards republican government.
(3) In 1846, he returned to Dickinson College to deliver a lecture to the General Union Philosophical Society that was published as The Relation of Christianity to Modern Civilization. He had been a member of the society during his college years and its president for a year. He chose the subject because he was concerned that the nation was pushing separation of church and state too far. In an encompassing fashion, he defined Christianity as “the religion of the Bible, embodied with more or less purity in the forms of the Bible, and continuing to exist in some organized form from the date of its establishment to the present time.” Civilization is “the personal, social and civil advancement of those things that pertain to the well being of the individual, and the well being of the community” (9). Throughout history, said Moore, Christianity provided positive influences on nations, and without its principles guiding governments, they were bound to repeat the decadence exhibited by the Roman Empire in the first century. After reviewing the brutality of the arena and gladiators, disregard for the sick and aging by the Romans, infanticide, disparagement of marriage, slavery, and mistreatment of women, he then pointed to Christianity as the source of positive influences through the Roman Theodosian Code of 438. He surveyed the history of Europe, then crossed the Atlantic to America, and buttressed his case that Christianity had positively influenced the West.
Unfortunately, Christian-dominated lands, said Moore, have not always manifested the Bible’s teaching, but the general impact of Scripture on issues such as mercy, generosity, care of children, fairness and honor to women, slavery, justice, and work ethic all evidence Christianity. Despite having been critical of his era, he saw some hope in the writings of Thomas B. Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, and François Guizot, because they had a sense of the hand of God in history, where their intellectual predecessors David Hume, Edward Gibbon, and Voltaire did not. The discourse ends on a pastoral note as Moore encouraged the young men of the philosophical gathering to influence the world for Christ and be wary of the dangers inherent in the quest for personal notoriety.
(4) Moore returned to Pennsylvania to deliver a lecture to the Philo and Franklin Societies of Jefferson College, August 3, 1853. The college was located just south of Pittsburgh in Canonsburg, and it would merge in 1865 to form Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania. The lecture was published in the pamphlet, The Conservative Elements of American Civilization, Pittsburgh.
The address to the members of the society opens with Moore stating that his purpose was to help the students understand the world in which they would be working once they graduated. As the United States grew, he believed it must do so with care and reflection so that it would not break away from its roots. The tendency to pursue material ends with material motives must be controlled. After recounting the geographic extension of the nation west as pioneers made their challenging journeys seeking better opportunities, he returned to the subject of materialism:
The tendency of this great movement being the elevation of the masses, each one is quickened with the desire of bettering his own condition, and busy with this he forgets everything else; and thus, the whole mass becomes absorbed with this eagerness for material improvement, for rising in life, and the result is a headlong rush to secure these material ends. (6)
On the one hand, bettering one’s condition is a good thing, but obsessive pursuit of material gain as an end in itself is not good for the individual nor society. Greed, says Moore, is exemplified in the quest for greater profits resulting in numerous deaths and injuries caused by overheated steam ships exploding, speeding trains derailing, and overloaded ships running awash. True nobleness of national character is eroded by individual selfishness, which then contributes to the demise of patriotism, a growth in lawlessness, and the loss of a sense of honor. Those things thought to be more important than the materialistic pursuits which consumed the lives of citizens—home, church, learning, and service—are replaced by entertainment, gaming, and alcohol. The destructive influence of materialistic thinking is exemplified in that “Men may buy and sell, may labor and rest, all unconscious that the shears of Delilah have been busy with the locks of their national might” (11). Without conservative restraint, the cancer of material pursuits metastasizes and preoccupies the nation.
His remedy for the danger of material greed and the decline of the nation is expressed in two points. The first is “a thorough training of the national mind by a sound education and a healthy literature” (12). Education was becoming a tool for wealth, but it needed to retain habits of personal reflection, rule of law, and both social and domestic stability. The fireside at home, the schoolhouse, and higher education along with proper literature are conservative institutions of the country that must be maintained for overcoming materialism. By securing the intellectual aspects of life, the first conservative aspect of American civilization will assure the future of the nation.
The second great conservative point is the “culture of the national heart that can only be furnished by the prevailing and penetrating power of a pure Christianity” (17). Even though education is essential for the nation’s future, if it is not built on an appropriate foundation, it will fail—both the head and the heart must be taught. Without understanding man’s depravity, education is incomplete and leads to a society that slips into thorough corruption; the “proclivity of our fallen nature is to evil, and unless there be some distinct agency to counteract this…it must sink deeper” (19). Only Christianity, said Moore, could provide the conservative element needed for sustaining the nation as it gave citizens something to hold onto. After commenting on the eroding influences coming from Europe, particularly France, the address is concluded with,
Here, then, we find the grand conservative element of our civilization, the pure and living religion of Jesus Christ, that has the promise of life that now is, and of that which is to come. The bulwarks of our liberty, and the defenses of our lives, are not our armies or our fleets, but our open Bible and our uplifted cross. (25)
The address to the young men in Jefferson College shows T. V. Moore’s reoccurring concerns for the authority of the Bible and the necessity of a Christian foundation for any nation, but particularly for his homeland, the United States. Graduates of Jefferson College became ministers, teachers, professors, jurists, politicians, and physicians, with each profession providing an opportunity to contribute to America’s continued existence. In an appended message directed more personally to the students, he called them to “sound scholarship and a manly piety” through Christ as they sought the kingdom of God and its righteousness (26–27).
Conclusion
During his brief fifty-three years of life, T. V. Moore was not only a minister feeding his flocks the word of God but also a concerned citizen contemplating the great experiment of the United States. His hope was to maintain the vision of the Founding Fathers and others who influenced the birth of the nation with their writings and dedicated service during the Revolution. A republic of responsible individuals influencing each level of government with an eye to the common good was important to Moore if the nation was to continue. Christianity is the only religion suitable for establishing a proper republic that is sensitive to the needs of its citizens.