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FALLS CHURCH, VA. — The Church of Christ in this Washington suburb meets less than 11 miles from the U.S. Capitol, where politicians use words to describe each other like “liberal,” “extremist,” “MAGA,” “socialist,” “woke” — even “weird.”How about “too nice?”
That was the accusation leveled at James A. Garfield, a preacher, Civil War general and long-tenured U.S. Congressman. On March 4, 1881, he became the 20th president of the United States.
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“I am a poor hater,” said Garfield, a baptized believer and member of the Disciples of Christ. He and his fellow church members eschewed manmade creeds and sought to restore simple, New Testament Christianity. In the decades that followed, one branch of the movement would become known as Churches of Christ — and known for our love of Scripture and a cappella worship and our opposition to mixed swimming and dancing.
C.W. Goodyear’s biography of James A. Garfield stands on a shelf of presidential biographies at a Barnes & Noble in Falls Church, Va.
Seven score and three years after Garfield’s inauguration, about 100 believers gathered to hear author C.W. Goodyear talk about his biography, “President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier” on The Christian Chronicle Podcast. The Church of Christ in Falls Church hosted the live taping.
Visitors came from the Fairfax Church of Christ, the University Church of Christ and the nearby Disciples of Christ congregation.
Hear Erik Tryggestad’s interview with C.W. Goodyear, author of “President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier,” in Episode 95 of The Christian Chronicle Podcast.
For me, visiting Falls Church was a homecoming of sorts. I was born here in 1973. The Watergate hearings were on the TV in my mom’s hospital room. We lived in nearby Alexandria until I was 5. I’m told that my first words were “Walter Cronkite.” We came back to visit several times while we lived in Georgia. I still get a giddy thrill stepping off the Yellow Line from Huntington to change to the Blue Line at L’Enfant Plaza.
C.W. Goodyear
Goodyear, a Yale grad, grew up abroad and felt a yearning for our nation and our history. His studies led him to the “too nice” President Garfield, a man whose incredible life journey — he was born in a log cabin to a family even poorer than Lincoln’s — too often gets overshadowed by his assassination after only six months in office.
Garfield wasn’t a pushover, Goodyear said. He was a gifted orator who argued fervently for his Republican beliefs.
But he also listened to his opponents. And on occasion, when confronted with a rational viewpoint that didn’t match his own, he would do the unthinkable: He would change his mind.
“He did not let doctrine limit his approach to a practical conversation in the realm of politics,” Goodyear said. This irritated his fellow Republicans, including Ulysses S. Grant and Frederick Douglass, who accused him of lacking “moral backbone.”
A statue of James A. Garfield stands outside the Capitol in Washington. An inscription on the reverse side reads “Major General U-S-V (United States Volunteers), Member of Congress, Senator and President of the United States of America.”
Garfield served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was minority leader. Sometimes, in the midst of a heated debate, he would “yield before an opponent and decide to change his own mind on an issue — a critical, hot-button issue of the times — when it became clear that one side needed to give,” Goodyear said. “Garfield was very happy to give, and that was (viewed as) a sign of great weakness in this incredibly partisan time of Reconstruction and the Gilded Age.”
Garfield turned his naysayers’ arguments against them. “To be an extreme man is doubtless comfortable,” he wrote. “It is painful to see so many sides to a subject.”
A 19th century lithograph depicts President James A. Garfield and his family seated around a table.
His biggest pivot might have been on the issue of slavery. He scoured the Scriptures, before and after his baptism in northeastern Ohio, and wrote in his journal that “the practice of slavery is not unchristian.” Later on, Garfield became a militant abolitionist. In a piece for The North American Review, he argued that attempts to suppress the right of Black Americans to vote was self-sabotage.
“To be an extreme man is doubtless comfortable. It is painful to see so many sides to a subject.”
“Enfranchisement will, in the long run, greatly promote the intellectual, moral and industrial welfare of the negro race in America,” Garfield wrote, “and, instead of imperiling the safety of our institutions, will remove from them the greatest danger which has ever threatened them.”
Goodyear himself is not a Restoration movement guy, but his portrayal of our fellowship is as artful as it is accurate. “Its adherents didn’t even like the idea of giving their denomination a name,” he wrote, “out of concern that doing so might erect yet another barrier in the already-divided world of Christendom. They preferred simply being called Christians. …
A statue of James A. Garfield stands outside the Capitol in Washington.
“In a similarly inclusive spirit, any given Disciple was technically as capable as any other to speak on matters of Scripture — for the movement lacked a hierarchical clergy …. The Disciples trusted congregants to serve as their own ministers and preachers, like religious minutemen.”
Sadly, I fear that our fellowship has lost some of this spirit of inclusivity, just as Congress folk have lost the willingness to listen and to reach a mutually beneficial compromise, as practiced by brother Garfield.
“I fear that our fellowship has lost some of this spirit of inclusivity, just as Congress folk have lost the willingness to listen and to reach a mutually beneficial compromise, as practiced by brother Garfield.”
Garfield also possessed a humility uncommon today in the arenas of politics and faith. After winning the presidency, he wrote a letter to fellow Restoration minister Burke Hinsdale cautioning the Disciples from making a big deal about the election.
“We must not dance as we cross the goal line,” Goodyear said, paraphrasing the letter.
“Yes,” I replied. “In Churches of Christ, we’re quite familiar with the phrase ‘must not dance.’”
Jordan Arnold, left, stands with Erik Tryggestad at the podcast recording. Arnold is pulpit minister for the Church of Christ in Falls Church, following retired minister Mike Tune. Arnold served as a missionary in Košice, Slovakia, and ministered for a Church of Christ in Hooker, Okla., before moving to Falls Church earlier this year.
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact erik@christianchronicle.org, and follow him on X @eriktryggestad.
