JWB and God

[L Verge]

I got an immediate response from Terry, and the answer is NO, he did not find any evidence to indicate that JWB converted from the Episcopal to the Catholic faith, despite what Asia wrote about him preferring the Catholic faith. I didn't realize that Asia converted to Catholicism after attending a school run by nuns -- shades of Mary Surratt.

Interesting tidbit that he shared: At the time of Junius The Elder's death, Mrs. Booth was visited by her next door neighbors, who were Methodist and who felt obliged to suggest that her husband was paying for his sins on earth and that she would do well to teach her children better beliefs. This impelled Mary Ann to send John and Joe back to St. Timothy's for baptism (see Jim's previous post).

There are some references to John wearing a small, religious medal (maybe the Agnus Dei medal) at the time of his death. There is no indication where it came from or its significance to him. However, as an Episcopalian, I can tell you that I once had an Agnus Dei medal given to me at the time of confirmation. I have also seen reference (maybe in An American Tragedy) to John having donated to a project that the Surratt ladies were involved with at church. Perhaps the medal was a token of appreciation.

Terry does stress that his research shows Booth attending a variety of Christian churches and would probably be classified as a "free thinker," who was not tied down to any one practice. He believed in God, but a god who allowed man to reason with his own styles of how life should be lived.

May I just say that the one page of text that Terry sent me in reference to this made me want to reach through the computer screen and seize the entire manuscript and begin reading at once! If this is a good example of his research, we may finally get a greater insight into what type of person Booth was -- far beyond the manipulative, insane character that history and historians (and the Civil War) have assessed him as.