The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th Century America

“[Matthews was a] poor [man]...rooted socially and emotionally in the yeoman republic of the eighteenth century [and] had been diminished by the revolution.” 

Matthews’s failure to find success in the emergent market system, along with his rejection of the new Christian revivalist sects ushered in by the Second Great Awakening, demonstrated his inability to adapt to his new surroundings. He remained a prisoner of his strict Calvinist upbringing, one that believed wholly in Old Testament patriarchy and predestination.

“At the center of the family’s map stood the Pierson’s’ spiritual bulwark, Morristown’s first Presbyterian church…[m]uch like most families of the period the Piersons were connected through their spirituality.” 

The center of town life in Morristown was the First Presbyterian Church. The Pierson family were founding members, which gave them status in the community. Pierson grew up with an awareness of his social ranking, which was reinforced by seating arrangements at the church. Wealthy families sat in the front pews, while the poor sat in the gallery.

“The few who went to church attended elegant Episcopalian and Dutch Reform establishments that, to Elijah’s way of thinking, were mere social clubs for the rich.” 

Pierson started to question the religious beliefs with which he grew up, conceding that, in Morristown, fathers take care of their families and the less fortunate. The brutal conditions of the poor in New York and the extreme social and economic differences between rich and poor shocked him. He was appalled by the indifference of the affluent to the plight of the poor and determined to utilize the benefits of both capitalism and the revivalist movement to actively help people mired in poverty, with the goal of bringing them closer to God.

“In evangelical homes, the primary moral teachers were no longer fathers who laid down the law; they were loving mothers who prayed with their children and taught them right from wrong.” 

The revivalist movements of the Second Great Awakening challenged patriarchal Old Testament teachings that reinforced male dominance and the inferiority of women. Popular alternatives to traditional Presbyterianism, like Finneyism, grew amongst the more prosperous merchant classes of the time, who saw their approach as more progressive and in line with the new market economy. Charles Finney promoted the idea of people taking responsibility for their own spiritual development and salvation by doing good deeds, which he equated to closeness to God. He was a great advocate of social reform and championed causes like the abolition of slavery, equal education for women and blacks, and expanding the role of women in church missionary outreach work.

“[Pierson’s part in the evangelical movement starts [with]…engagement in lay missions and a willingness to be governed by God through prayer.”

Pierson had a more progressive approach to religion than Matthews, but when his wife Sarah died, he met Matthews and followed Matthews’s lead. A major aspect of Matthews’s teaching was based on resentment of evangelical movements like Finneyism, which catered to better-educated, middle- and upper-class merchants. Pierson, like Matthews, claimed that this brand of revivalism, as well as others, deny Old Testament social norms.

“The marriage of Elijah and Sarah Pierson [is] not based on inherited property, large families, or patriarchal assumptions. It [is] a spiritualized union between partners.” 

Marrying Sarah was a choice that Pierson made freely, and he was happy while married. They shared the same enthusiasm for missionary work and were dedicated to fostering social change. He knew that if he had stayed in Morristown, he would have married a woman selected by the elders and that his arranged marriage would have been designed to produce many children to help work the land and to increase his family’s property and holdings.

“Many of the girls claimed to have sold themselves in confusion and desperation after being abandoned by bad husbands or fathers.” 

Pierson eventually rejected the patriarchal community of his youth, but when he saw the number of girls and women in New York who fell into prostitution, he realized that in Morristown, fathers supported their families and the poor in the community. The same could not be said of many fathers who lived in the slums of New York. Most did not take the responsibility of fatherhood seriously, which meant that their wives and children suffered. Pierson understood that people were poor not because they were sinners or because God ordained it; rather, they were often poor because their fathers and husbands abandoned them and they were forced to make bad moral choices just to survive.

“[In] the year after Elijah’s attempt to raise Sarah [from the dead], his former evangelical friends abandoned him one by one.” 

After Sarah’s death, Pierson’s mental health began to erode. His missionary work merged with his declining mental state, as demonstrated by his attempt to raise Sarah from the dead. His behavior discredited him in the eyes of many, and with few exceptions, his followers left his ministry. His ultra-spiritual perspective alienated most of the people around him.

“[Unlike Elijah Pierson, who] walked nervously through the streets [of Manhattan], past prostitutes and drunkards, Robert Matthews, the precocious journeyman carpenter, viewed the same scenes with the righteous fervor of a devout Anti-Burgher, which quickly got him into trouble.” 

When Elijah Pierson first moves to Manhattan, he keeps to himself; Matthews, on the other hand, shares his intensely independent attitude with his co-workers, making him unpopular at work. His constant attempts to convert his coworkers earned him the nickname ‘Jumping Jesus,’ and he was eventually fired for the strength of his convictions. Instead of acculturating to his new environment, where most people were not religious, Matthews behaved as if he were still in Coila, where religion was at the center of community life.

“[Matthews] would be a loving man; in his temperance work, he would lead others to righteousness.” 

Initially, Matthews gravitated towards the gentler and more feminine subculture followed by new evangelical churches; however, his interest faded quickly. His angry, misogynistic personality precluded his acceptance by evangelical church leaders. For example, Kirk refused to accept Matthews’s request for membership in his Finneyite church because of Matthews had a reputation for spousal abuse and irregular work habits. Matthews rejected Finneyism and similar revivalist sects that encouraged women to play a more central role in missionary and outreach work to the poor. He reverted to his early Calvinist training that emphasized Old Testament patriarchy and women’s inferiority.

“Despite all of his protestations of faith, [Matthews] was violating the most basic precepts of evangelical manhood, with his unsteady work habits, his self-glorification, and his domestic tyranny.” 

According to evangelicals, the father is head of his household. His role includes responsibility for the care and well-being of one’s wife and children. When Matthews stopped working because he believed that God has anointed him to do God’s work, he disregarded this fundamental role of father and provider. He also failed as a father by putting his three young sons in danger when Matthews took them with him on his quest to save the world. As well, Matthews abandoned his wife Margaret, leaving her to scrape and beg for food to feed their children so he could assume his new role as the Prophet Matthias.

“Polished, well-educated, self-professed Christians like Edward Kirk were really devils, [Matthews] now realized, come to spread disorder in the world. They achieved their objective by wresting women from their godly subordination to men and by telling them that they had special powers.” 

Matthews’s resentment of Edward Kirk had little to do with Matthews’s disapproval of Finneyism; instead, Matthews felt a personal resentment towards Kirk, who denied Matthews membership in his church. Matthews blamed the preacher for his own shortcomings and, by extension, for the entire Finneyite movement.

“Matthias’s mission was to establish that Reign of Truth and redeem the world from devils, prophesying women and beaten men.” 

The ideological underpinnings of Matthews’s Reign of Truth effectively made him God incarnate. His subjective interpretation of God’s word resulted in his absolute authority over the Kingdom and his followers. He insisted that their understanding of the world and of God was based on what Matthews himself decreed. He denied his followers freedom of thought and action and required obedience and loyalty.

“[E]verything that has the smell of women will be destroyed. Woman is the cap sheaf of the abomination of desolation—full of all devilry. All women not obedient had better become so as soon as possible.”

This passage exemplifies Matthews’s misogyny. He believed that the central role of women in the various revivalist sects that emerged during the Second Great Awakening were responsible for his lack of success. He also blamed his wife, Margaret (specifically, her refusal to submit to him) as a fundamental cause of his failure. He refused to adapt to a changing environment, where women were empowered, believing that this environment was destroying the natural order of patriarchy ordained by God.

“In the Kingdom of Matthias there would be no market, no money, no buying or selling, no wage system with its insidious domination of one father over another, no economic oppression of any kind.” 

Matthews blamed his failed economic and commercial ventures on changes in religious norms introduced by revivalist movements and emerging market capitalism. One of the most popular of these revivalist movements was Finneyism, which aligned itself with the new market system. Matthews promised his followers that his Kingdom will reestablish the natural order, as based on God’s laws.

“Matthias was not just father but the Father, occupied with government and prophecy. He put the men and boys to work on the farm…Matthias kept [women] in the house.”

As the Father of his Kingdom, Matthews assumed control of his followers’ lives. He assigned work to his followers based on gender. Men were occupied with manual labor and work outside in the larger community. Women, on the other hand, stayed on the compound and cooked and cleaned. Women were also required to provide sex on demand to their so-called “match spirits.”

“At the heart of [Matthews’] cosmology was a strenuous effort to elevate, in sometimes twisted and exaggerated forms, the ideals of manhood he had learned to respect back in Coila.” 

Matthews’s rejection of changing religious and social norms was at the very heart of his Kingdom’s patriarchal philosophy. He blamed his business failures on changes precipitated by the new market system and the revivalist movement, which he believed threatened the status of men by elevating women’s status in society. He set up the Kingdom in reaction to these changes, rejecting everything associated with the new social order.

“[T]he women served Matthias separately, bringing plates of food for his sole use… [It] was at the supper table that Matthias spun out a fine-tuned spiritual economy that inflicted terror and conviction of sin, then resolved them through obedience to the Father.” 

Dining rituals at Mount Zion were designed to reinforce Matthews’s control of his followers, especially the women. Suppers were held according to patriarchal Old Testament standards, and gender roles were believed to have been established by God. Matthews sat at the head of the table, served separately by the women. He drank from a silver chalice, while followers drank from regular tumblers. Meals were dominated by Matthews’s long, angry sermons on a range of subjects. These patriarchal gatherings took place every night as he sought to establish norms at the Kingdom based on half-remembered recollections of his life at Coila.

"Matthias vented his most awful rages on those who got sick, for sickness was a sure sign of disobedience. Matthias…insisted that sick people harbored detached spirits, or devils; blind men had blind devils, cripples had limping devils, and so on. Matthias could cast out these devils, and sometimes did so. But his usual response to sickness in his house was rage.” 

Matthews’s anger when his followers fell sick may be traced to his sons’ untimely deaths due to illness. He may have chosen to blame evil spirits or a lack of faith rather than accept what happened to his children as God’s will. When Pierson became ill, he did not object when the prophet refused to let him see a doctor; Pierson even agreed that his illness was his fault. On one occasion, Matthews whipped Isabella Van Wagenen severely for getting sick. Cult members quickly learned to keep their health issues from Matthews. When Pierson died, people in the outside community, already angry and disgusted with the goings on at the Kingdom, claimed that Pierson was murdered.

“The Ann Folger that Isabella observed was no longer the chaste and humble housewife of her Christian days. She was now a sexually charged temptress who threatened Matthias with a peculiarly feminine chaos.” 

Isabella, also known as Sojourner Truth, was very disappointed when Matthews and Ann Folger started a romantic relationship. She blamed Ann, deciding that she was a devil sent to test Matthias and the Kingdom. She was convinced that Ann’s fawning attention to Matthews, her sewing and embroidering the prophet’s special clothes, and Ann’s eagerness to embrace his teachings was a ploy to seduce him and to distract Matthews from fulfilling his role as Father of the Kingdom.

“[T]he Prophet used Pierson's death as an example to the others. When Benjamin expressed surprise that Elijah had died so suddenly, Matthias snapped that all his enemies would get the same treatment, hinting that somehow, he, Matthias, had been responsible for everything. All who opposed him could expect the same thing: he had the power to do it.” 

Matthews’s reaction to Benjamin Folger displays the growing animosity between the two men. Matthews interpreted Folger’s comment as a direct challenge to Matthews’s authority and felt compelled to quell any potential uprising by his followers. He was aware of the growing tension at the Kingdom, which was exacerbated by Pierson’s unexpected death. 

“[T]he penny papers based their success on gaining a mass circulation among the urban working classes, crowding out the political news and mercantile reports that were the staple of New York journalism, in favor of more fanciful, at times lurid accounts of life and death in the emerging metropolis. The Matthias story, with its themes of religious delusion, sexual depravity, and (in time) alleged murder, was perfect fare for the penny press editors.”

The penny press published news of the scandal at Mount Zion, and the story of Matthews established the popularity of this new type of new story. Events at the Kingdom fascinated readers in New York and then across America. Most readers were hostile to Matthews; to many, he personified the dangers of religious fanaticism. Penny press editors also raised questions about the extent to which Matthews’s followers were to blame, inspiring much public commentary and debate.

“In the hands of writers like Poe, Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, as well as minor figures of the American Renaissance, metropolitan crime reporting furnished materials for more self-consciously artistic efforts. A Salem murder case went into the writing of Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables; Poe retold the Mary Rogers case…bits and pieces of various penny-press sensations turned up in Melville’s novels and Whitman’s poems.” 

This passage reveals that the penny press papers inspired many reputable writers. Actual events inspired the writings of many authors of the American canon, which took the form of poetry and prose. Though the penny press had a reputation similar to the tabloids of today, the news pieces captured many literary imaginations who saw interesting stories that reveal the human condition in the publications.