Within the overall Christian community, there continues to be waged the debate over who is really a Christian and who is not. For many, this is a debate about belief: belief in the Bible rather than belief in any scientific finding which might contradict the Bible. There is a feeling that science and Christian religion are irreconcilable, particularly with regard to the creation of the universe, the age of the planet, and the origins of humans. These are not recent arguments, but ones which have been taking place for the last couple of centuries. One of the more interesting debates centered around the shape of the earth, with some arguing that it was impossible to be a Christian and believe that the earth is a globe.
One of those who argued that the scientific view of the earth as a globe is incompatible with the Bible and thus incompatible with Christianity and Christian beliefs was Lady Elizabeth Anne Mould Blount (1850-1935). In 1905, she told an American journalist:
“If the Bible is the word of God it is absolutely true. We must accept it as a whole or else accept none of it. We cannot divorce the religion of the Bible from the science of the Bible, hence the globists cannot be Christians—nor can Bible Christians be followers of Newton’s philosophy.”
Background:
Lady Blount was born Elizabeth Williams in 1850. She was the youngest daughter of James Zacharias Williams, a well-to-do architect and land surveyor in South London. Her father was an earnest Christian with an interest in science and religion.
When she was 23 years old, she married Sir Walter de Sodington Blount Bt who was 18 years her senior. Sir Walter was the son of Sir Edward Blount. The Blount family title dated back to the English Civil War. Sir Walter and his family, however, were Catholics, and when the marriage took place in an Anglican church, he was disowned.
In the 1890s, Lady Blount began a campaign which advocated the strict creationist interpretation of the Bible.
Universal Zetetic Society:
Lady Blount was disgusted by the “scientific blasphemy” of globular theory (the idea that the earth was a sphere) and with the “illogical Christians” who supported this idea. In 1893, she established the Universal Zetetic Society (UZS) whose object was:
“the propagation of knowledge relating to Natural Cosmology [the creation of the world] in confirmation of the Holy Scripture, based on practical scientific investigation.”
With the appearance of wealth and a title, Lady Blount was able to attract members of the English social elite to UZS membership. The membership included Ethelbert William Bullinger (an Anglican clergyman and Bible scholar) and Dr. Edward Haughton (senior moderator in natural science at Trinity College, Dublin.)
Using the Bible as her source of data and citing Biblical passages to verify her claims, Lady Blount proclaimed that the world is not round, but outstretched as a plane with firmly fixed foundations. The sun, moon, and stars are only powerful lights which move around above the earth and are not more than a few thousand miles away. Lady Blount was a creationist who believed that the world had been created in six days a little more than 6,000 years ago and that the Bible was the unquestionable authority about the natural world.
During a series of nationwide lecture tours, Lady Blount disseminated her views. Her audiences were sometimes hostile and the response included booing, hissing, and laughter. Christine Garwood, in her book Flat Earth, reports:
“Set on her evangelical mission, she was not discouraged, and soon developed her own presentations style, integrating prayers and Bible readings as well as the occasional song into her lengthy talks.”
Lady Blount wrote:
“It is an unimpeachable fact that the Bible is as scientifically accurate in its description of Creation, as fit is in setting forth Redemption in and through our dear Redeemer.”
“…we behold the fact that the Bible account of Creation is true, precludes the possibility of our acceptance of the unscriptural and wildly romantic teaching presented to us by modern scientists.”
Like the modern creationists and Young Earth believers, Lady Blount strongly opposed the idea of evolution and felt that it was in conflict with Christian theology. In addition, she opposed the ideas of Newton with regard to gravity and astronomy. With regard to Newtonian theory:
“They tell us that as the sun, the moon, and the planets are globular, therefore the earth must be globular. But this is contrary to the teaching of the Bible, which states that the earth is ‘fixed,’ and that the heavenly bodies were made to give light to our earth, and to divide the light from the darkness, and to rule over the day and the night.”
She also noted that the original idea that the earth was spherical was pagan in origin and therefore non-Christian. She wrote:
“The origin of the Globular theory may be traced and shown to be Pagan. It was introduced by the Greek Pythagoras, about 60 B.C.”
Like the modern day creationists, Lady Blount attempted to promote a pseudoscience in which scientific concerns for confirmation bias would be discarded and which would serve to selectively collect and interpret data which would confirm the accuracy and truth of the Protestant Christian Bible.