nov 6, 1876 - H. G.'s coe against Rev. Young, Leaves Fullerton Ave Presb.

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Thursday 6 Nov. 1876: A special meeting was held at Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian Church called by the finance committee under the rouse, that the churches financers were bad. However, it was a plot for Spafford to oust via vote Rev. Young from his pastorship of the church. Spafford was only expecting a small amount to turn up, but enough for a vote. However, the vote was defeated 120 to 20. Evidently Young was preaching and teaching the doctrines of Presbyterianism, to which Spafford no longer believed in. This theological departure seems to have started with the sinking of the Ville Du Havre in “73. The Spafford family soon left the Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian Church.

There is much conjecture about the reasons and circumstances that the Spafford's left the church. In the above account I have argued that Spafford left the church in a blaze of glory after he lost his leadership challenge.

Vester, omits this leadership challenge and sais that her father was asked to leave the church as he was advocating his new found beliefs,

" [Spafford] had come to believe that the blows that had been dealt them were not in punishment for their sins. They could not believe that their innocent babies, or any other babies, were in hell. Father probed further he could no longer believe in a tangible hell or a personal devil. Naturally this doctrine exploded the idea of eternal punishment, and this was contrary to what was then the tenets of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. e facts it took on the ridiculous. Father and Mother were asked to leave the Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian Church, the church Father had helped to build, the church of which he was an elder, the church where my sisters and brother had been baptized, the church they loved.

A desire to teach these beliefs seem to me to be a reason why Spafford challenged Reverend Yong for leadership.

Another common claim is that the Fullerton Avenue Church shunned the Spaffords, as they were being punished by God for unrepentant sin, and this unloving attitude caused the Spaffords to leave. This argument would appear to come from Vesters comments on her fathers state of mind as he was leaving Chicago to go be with his wife after the Ville du Havre Sank in 1871:

The Puritan foundation of the Protestant churches had carried into the United States many of the harsh Old Testament tenets.
It was universally accepted by all Christians then that sickness or sorrow was the result of sin. One was the just retribution of the other.
What had Father done, what had his young wife done, that they should be so afflicted? He felt that eyes were looking askance at him, wondering. All around him people were asking the unvoiced question, What guilt had brought this sweeping tragedy to Anna and Horatio Spafford?

Please note, Vester never said that people were in fact thinking this, only that Spafford 'felt' that he was being judged. She never said that there was any shunning from the church community. Although the sinking of the Ville du Havre and his experience, felt or actual, clearly lead him to rethink his theology, Ultimately though some shunning in 1871, does not explain his leaving in 1876.

(Library of Congress, Washington, DC, ‘The Fullerton Avenue Church’ 8; Vester 44–45) ----‘The Fullerton Avenue Church’. Chicago Daily Tribune, no. 1876/07/08, 8 July 1876, p. 8. chroniclingamerica.loc.gov, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84031492/1876-07-08/ed-1/seq-8/. ; Vester, Bertha Spafford. Our Jerusalem an American Family in the Holy City, 1881-1949. Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1950.

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