If you remember the story of Ben Franklin and his lightning experiment, do you remember the part about protracted theological objections? Me either.
Benjamin Franklin was many things during his lifetime. Among other things he was a scientist, writer, inventor and diplomat. He was also a slave owner and a founding father of America. Around the month of June in 1752 Franklin launched a kite into some storm clouds and made history. Will either he did or someone else did. Franklin was well known for his meticulous notes on each experiment that he performed. Interestingly, Franklin seems to have never made any notes about the kite-lightning experiment.1 So who knows.
Prior to his kite-lightning experiment, Franklin had done considerable work attempting to understand electricity. In fact Franklin had achieved a kind of popular notoriety among his scientific contemporaries that he was perhaps the Galileo or Newton of his time. Our modern understanding of electricity and lightning are greatly different and far more advanced from that of Franklin’s time. Yet what Franklin did was not insignificant. Franklin's use of empirical scientific observation was the culmination of the 18th century Enlightenment project. Franklin was able to demonstrate that lightning was not an act of God. 2
Franklin theorized, based on his kite-lightning experiment, that lightning was a form of static electricity and used his newfound knowledge to create the lightning rod. Franklin's invention suggested that if God was doing anything he was giving humans the ability to protect themselves.
This was a major shift in how many people thought about the world. Instead of thinking that perhaps God or the devil was behind acts like lightning they instead could be shown to have a scientific explanation. As you might imagine this caused all kinds of reactions. People still lived in a world in which the unexplained, such as lightning, were explained/viewed through the lens of a magical or non-scientific world.
For example on February 16, 600 CE, Pope Gregory I issued a papal decree. He required all Christians (in 600 CE the only “type” of Christian was Catholic) to use the expression “God bless you” and make the sign of the cross over their mouth when in the presence of someone who sneezed. It was thought that doing so would be some kind of protection against the spread of the bubonic plague. This practice of saying “God bless you” or “bless you” is still used today when a person sneezes. It is considered to be a social politeness. Yet, nobody thinks that saying “God bless you” and making the sign of the cross over your mouth will stop the spread of viruses like COVID or the flu. We have a scientific understanding of how viruses are transmitted from one person to another. While saying “God bless you” might be a politie kindness, we understand that it does not stop the transmission of viruses.
Franklin’s kite-lightning experiment and subsequent development of the lightning rod was a direct threat to how people understood how the world worked. It was a threat to the power and sway that the church had in society. People and groups in power typically don’t like threats to their power. In general, Franklin was offering an alternative understanding of how the world operated. Was God in direct control of things like lightning or not? If God does not have direct control over lightning, like church leaders say, then what else might God not be in control of? Who is right? A science experiment or what church leaders had been saying?
Franklin’s kite-lightning experiment was part of the shift into the modern mindset that we currently all experience the world through. Philosopher Charles Taylor calls the way that we experience the world today “the immanent frame.” You can read more about that here. In summary we live in a world that is disenchanted. A world in which the transcended seems erroneous and empirical verifiable natural evidence is all that is.
From our perspective you would think that churches would have immediately installed lightning rods on their buildings. After all it was mostly church buildings, often being the tallest buildings in town, that were often damaged during lightning storms. Many lives had been lost to lightning strikes as well (see part 1). From a modern-day perspective this is an easy decision. Purchase and install a lightning rod on the church building . . . like today.
However, many during Franklin’s time became skeptical of messing with the Lord’s lightning. There were all kinds of reactions. Church leaders claimed that attempting to control “the artillery of heaven” would incite God’s wrath. Others labeled Franklin’s lightning rod the “heretical rod.” Sermons were preached against it. The Rev. Thomas Prince was a graduate of Harvard and during his lifetime he wrote a great many books and delivered numerous sermons. While serving as the pastor of Old South Church in Boston in 1755, he used his Sunday message to denounce Franklin’s lightning rod as the cause of a recent earthquake in Massachusetts.
Part of the Rev. Prince’s statement on the matter reads:
For I cannot believe, that in the whole town of Boston, where so many iron points are erected, there is so much as one person who is so weak, so ignorant, so foolish, or, to say all in one word, so atheistical, as ever to have entertained a single thought that it is possible, by the help of a few yards of wire, to “get out of the mighty hand of GOD.”3
There was even a famous legal case.4 In the summer of 1783 a legal case was brought before a French court. A man had become upset that his next-door neighbor had installed a lightning rod on his home chimney. He was afraid that the lightning rod would entreat God’s wrath and welcome lightning strikes. The man had gone to court and won a legal case to force his neighbor to remove the lightning rod. That case was appealed and eventually overturned. The major deal here is that this case was won because the lawyer showed how scientific evidence related to legal authority which was a legal first.
It wasn’t until 1768 that enough lightning rods had been installed that their effectiveness and credibility was more certain. In 1786 the French Parliament issued an edict proclaiming an end to bell ringing for the purposes of warding off lightning. Yet many local mayors and other officials did not enforce the new ruling because they feared the backlash of the people in their community. Even in 1824 new church bells were being baptized into use for the Cathedral of Versailles for the purpose of warding off lightning.
Point is . . . Franklin’s kite-lightning experiment changed things. It was part of a shift in thinking that has enveloped just about every corner of the world. What might this mean for the modern-day church which claims that the transcendent still matters. Not just matters yet adds to what it means to live a good life and thus impacts daily living. In the last post we will explore a few implications for the modern-day church.
1 Mayado and Yana Caplan, “Weatherwatch: Lightning Made Castles and Churches Very Dangerous Places,” The Guardian, June 15, 2011, https://theguardianmagazine.com/.
2 Philip Dray, Stealing God's Thunder: Benjamin Franklin's Lightning Rod and the Invention of America (New York, New York: Random House, 2005), XV.
3 “Two Boston Puritans on God, Earthquakes, Electricity, and Faith,” accessed October 22, 2022, http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/becomingamer/ideas/text5/godlightningrods.pdf.
4 Use the link to read about the legal case over Franklin’s lightning rod. https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/lawyer.pdf
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