Battle Creek, Michigan: What do Sojourner Truth and Cornflakes Have in Common?

On my summer vacation, I am determined to read all twelve book of the Left Behind series, the Christian post-apocalyptic thriller set in the Last Days of the earth, between the "Rapture of the Church" (an event which some evangelical Christians believe will occur "in the twinkling of an eye" when Jesus Christ will instantly call his followers to "meet him in the air" and they will be taken up to heaven before the great Tribulation and the coming of the Antichrist) and the "Glorious Appearing," which truly marks the end of the world.  Why am I reading this series?  Because I am a religion teacher, and it is a vision of America.

American religions and apolcalyptic prophecies go hand in hand.  In 1844, William Miller, a Baptist preacher in Rochester, New York, carefully read and studied the Bible, especially the prophecies contained in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation (the same books the authors and characters in the Left Behind series use to predict their "End Times" events) and told his followers to expect the return of Jesus Christ on October 22nd of that year.  In what has become known as "The Great Disappointment," followers let their crops sit in their fields unharvested and climbed onto the roofs of their homes to await the Lord.  Of course, He didn't show up, but out of those followers, who were then shunned from their former churches, grew the Seventh Day Adventist movement.  After Miller's death, an American prophetess (one of my favorite words), Ellen White, arose.  Ellen received visions from God, direct revelations in the manner of the medieval seers Hroswitha, Hildegard of Bingen and the wonderful Julian of Norwich. Ellen and her husband, James, moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where they began a small community.

For some reason, upstate New York was fertile ground for 19th century prophets and prophetesses.  Mother Ann and her protege, Mother Lucy, of the Shakers, had paved the way earlier for the likes of Joesph Smith (founder of the Mormon church), the Millers, and John Noyes (of the Oneida community).  Many of them later moved to the Midwest.  Maybe upstate New York is known for its open-mindedness (the Woodstock Festival) and progressive ideas (Frederick Douglass published the North Star there; the Seneca Falls Convention was held there, etc.), but if you want to be a modern day prophet, upstate New York is your place.

Matthew had been to Battle Creek as a child to visit the Kellogg's factory.  "I remember we had Fruit Loops at the end of the tour.  Fruit Loops had just been invented."  I had wanted to visit Battle Creek in February because the famous prophetess, abolitionist, and women's rights advocate,  Sojourner Truth, lived there at the end of her life and is buried there.  But in February, her grave was under about 6 feet of snow, so we postponed the trip until the summer.

I also found out they had built a 12 foot statue of Sojourner

Battle Creek is a strange convergence of abolitionism, Seventh Day Adventism, and wacky health/diet/hygiene practices.  In 1849, a group of slave catchers came up here to find an escaped slave and the entire town, after helping the family to get across to Canada, attacked and captured the slave hunters and put them on trial.  The entire state of Michigan was a huge set of stops on the underground railroad, and the behavior of the people of Michigan was one reason why, in 1850, the Fugitive Slave Laws were passed as part of the compromise of 1850.  Sojourner Truth, the powerful orator, ended up settling here, and she even visited Ellen White and her husband at their little village.

However, Sojourner never wanted to join any religion, despite her friendship with Ellen White.  Ellen herself didn't really intend to found a new religion; she just wanted to share her visions, along with her interpretation of the Scriptures, with the world.  Did you know that she is the most translated woman writer in the world?  I decided to buy a couple of her books about the Bible, God and health, and see what she had to say.  So far, her vision of God is much more kind, loving and pleasant than the Left Behind dudes would think.  She talks of God as an amazingly, infinitely loving father, and understands the death of Jesus not (as the Calvinists believe) as some sort of propitiation to an angry God for our sins, but as an expression of God's infinite love. Any depiction of God as wrathful and jealous is, in fact, a slanderous plot by Satan, the father of lies, to give Him a bad reputation.  The Adventists definitely believe the end of the world is imminent, but they do not think God will be responsible for the tremendous human suffering that "the Wrath of the Lamb" wreaks in the fourth book of the series (that's the one I'm on right now.  The Antichrist has taken over the United Nations and so God sends a huge earthquake that crushes a lot of stuff.  To be continued.)  Ellen White continued to have visions of God's love and to interpret Bible prophecies here in Battle Creek for many years.  I think her books are even bigger bestsellers than the Left Behind series.

The Adventists also believe in staying healthy; many are vegetarians, and most of them don't smoke or drink alcohol.  One of their most famous followers was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, whose younger brother, William, patented and sold breakfast cereal.  The Kelloggs and the Whites had set up a health farm/sanitarium in Battle Creek, and thousands of people flocked here for the fresh air, exercise, and the treatments provided by Kellogg.  The invention of breakfast cereal allegedly took place at this time, when Kellogg was trying to find a healthier, vegetarian substitute for bacon and eggs, but something that was easier to chew than dry toast.  He ended up inventing "flakes" for breakfast.  His younger brother was the one who ended up patenting it and selling it and making zillions of dollars, as did his protege, C.W. Post.

After the sanitarium burned down, the Whites and Dr. Kellogg parted ways because Kellogg wanted to build a giant sanitarium in its place, and the Whites were reluctant.  Kellogg had become a kind of a crackpot, even holding a eugenics convention here before he died at the age of 91.  

They are all buried in the same cemetery: the Whites, the Kelloggs, and Sojourner Truth, whose humble memorial sits in the shadow of C.W. Post's (I love Grape Nuts) magnificent mausoleum. (That's it in the backgroud of this photo)

I never knew, when I first visited Michigan, that there were so many interesting, and intertwined stories here. 

Click here to hear Alice Walker deliver Sojourner Truth's famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?"