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BY 1850 the number of churches in Athens County had grown to 24, with the two oldest groups, the Methodists and Presbyterians, leading the count with 12 churches and 8, respectively. The Second Great Awakening had set the stage for the growth of these two religious powerhouses, but other denominations had a foothold as well: the county had two Baptist churches, one Roman Catholic, and one Universalist.
From this smorgasbord of religious sentiment, Jonathan Koons had tasted nothing that would satisfy his soul. Behind the trappings of an ordinary farmer, he harbored beliefs that were far from common in Athens County. Koons had long been alienated from traditional Christian teachings, even though he was married to the daughter of a Baptist minister. As he would later write, he was, in fact, an infidel:
I had become an advocate in defence of atheistical sentiments, through the perversion of Christian orthodoxy, under the instructions of which I had been placed at an early age, and which for a time had taken hold on my mind. But soon finding myself sadly disappointed in my vain expectations of receiving those spiritual gifts and blessings which I anticipated at the mercy of God, through my devoted teachers, I soon became subjected to the title of backslider by those from whom I had departed in faith, and simultaneously heaped their scorn and derision upon me with such heated fury, until I was racked with fears, and was frequently constrained to cry, Oh Lord, save or I perish. But not withstanding all my repeated efforts to reconcile myself to their wedded faith; my researches after truth were only instrumental in disclosing new fields of ideas, which would not admit of any corresponding connection with the attributes of an allwise, benevolent and merciful God.
In particular Koons had trouble reconciling his childhood religious teachings with the notion of a merciful God. The steady diet of Calvinist theology emphasized humans’ sinfulness, the depravity from which no amount of good works could cleanse a person over the course of a lifetime. Adam and Eve’s error would always be visited on him, his children, and their children until the end of time. Worse still, humans had no free will with which to seek salvation; God had already predestined who would be saved and who would be lost; the former, called the elect, would never have to face the fires of hell.
After his conversion to spiritualism, Jonathan would put those fears to rest, confidently stating,
Let us strictly avoid the propagation of the preposterous notion, that any distinguished sect, party or person, above all others, is a “special elect” favorite of a universal Deity, or some man-made Bible-God; a doctrine that has cursed and retarded the progress of the human family in all ages of the world, from the date of Adam hence to modern Calvinism; which, last, and worst of all, teaches “that all those, and those alone, who were from eternity elected to salvation, are given Christ by the Father,” or God. . . . In place of the doctrine of election, let all reformed teachers to the contrary consider themselves . . . the common and legitimate heirs . . . of one and the same universal paternity.
Spiritualists offered a kinder, gentler religion espousing many heavens, no hell, and room for every soul. They believed in a universal brotherhood in which all had a chance, and indeed a responsibility, to improve themselves, not only in this life but after death. Spiritual evolution was a process. Individual spirits progressed through a series of concentric circles stretching out from Earth. The longer a person was dead, the more likely he or she was to lose contact with those on the planet. Some souls, however, chose to stay near, to assist loved ones on Earth as well as prove the existence of life after death. Thus spiritualism had a strong attraction for the recently bereaved. If its promise were true, mediums could provide the connecting link between survivors and those gone on, conveying the proof of survival so desperately sought.
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IN late 1851 Koons’s uneasy relationship with the church became public knowledge in a most unseemly fashion. Twelve-year-old Filenia, Abigail and Jonathan’s second child, died of an enlarged heart on September 1. How long she had suffered from this condition is not known, but she had been well enough the previous summer to present the editors of the Athens Messenger newspaper with a basket of fruit on some unspecified occasion.
“Her disease . . . bid defiance to all the medical aid that could be procured on her behalf,” her obituary stated. “She was a striking specimen of beauty, intelligence and piety. She was the pride of her doting parents, but, like the untimely flower, she faded and vanished from their sight, leaving many friends to mourn her departure.” The notice concluded with 12 lines of poetry stating the conventional sentiment that Filenia, having escaped sorrow and suffering, was now in a better place. What is striking about the poem, however, is that the word Communicated appeared at the end of it, rather than an author’s name. This suggests that whoever submitted the obituary to the newspaper believed that the spirits were already communicating with the family.
That chasm of time in September must had been exquisitely bittersweet for the Koons family, as Abigail gave birth to a boy on September 2, before her daughter’s body had even been buried. Jonathan’s lack of faith made the little girl’s death even more devastating. “What rendered the occurrence [of Filenia’s death] more trying than otherwise was my skepticism relative to the immortality of the soul, which, with myself, had been a subject of doubt for some years,” her father would later write. “Fearing that this would be our final separation, and the blotting out of all her mental functions and sensitive powers, I viewed death as the final destroyer and extinguisher of all our physical charms, sorrow and pleasures. In this state of mind, I was prevailed upon to consent to the formal ceremony of a funeral discourse. I accordingly dispatched a friend for a clergyman, with instruction to employ the first one he met, without regard to his disciplinary profession.”
After that the story diverged in its retelling—not so much in the facts themselves but in their interpretation. Along with Filenia’s obituary in the Athens Messenger appeared a scathing letter signed “A Friend” and authenticated in a preamble by Jonathan Koons himself. The anonymous person wrote:
Messrs. Editors—On the occasion of the death of Miss Koons, in accordance with the wish of mourning parents, a friend was dispatched in pursuit of some (soul-loving) Divine to deliver a funeral address, with instructions to pay no regard to sect or name of religion—thinking that the most suitable time to make lasting impressions upon the young minds of the surviving brothers and sisters. But alas! the mourners were sadly disappointed to learn from their friend that he met with a positive denial both from the Rev. Mr.——of the Methodist Church and the Rev. Mr.——of the Presbyterian order (residents of Athens) after an earnest solicitation on his part: and after being induced by the latter to state the character, religious denomination and family circumstances of the deceased—and for no other reason than that the sun shone too hot for them to ride out at that time. However, the funeral procession was made up with a respectable assembly of friends and well-wishers of the deceased who contributed due respect to the occasion by an honorable interment and a full manifestation of their sympathy for the surviving relatives: and it is hoped that the friends will yet find someone to favor them with a funeral sermon: someone with equal mental abilities and a physical constitution which will enable him to endure the electric rays of a scorching sun or the inclemency of a mild and gentle breeze after a regaling shower, which proved to be the case on that occasion.—A FRIEND
Addressing the questions supposedly posed by the Presbyterian minister, Koons might have revealed that he was both an infidel and a Whig. Instead he distilled his beliefs into two short sentences: “I will only add to avoid future enquiries as to my religious and political creed, that the former is ‘Do unto others as you wish others to do unto you’—the latter is ‘Vote for righteous measures and men who are just and true.’—Yours with respect, JONATHAN KOONS.”
Thus began a war of words in the local newspaper, with the two ministers trying to defend their reputations. Both men maintained that their inaction had nothing to do with Jonathan Koons’s beliefs but stemmed
