''Heavenly Discourse'' is a collection of satirical essays by

Charles Erskine Scott Wood Charles Erskine Scott Wood (February 20, 1852January 22, 1944), also known as C. E. S. Wood, was an American author, civil liberties advocate, artist, soldier, attorney, and Georgist. He is best known as the author of the 1927 satirical bestselle ...

, published in 1927.

Publication

Wood primarily wrote poetry and serious prose. However,

Max Eastman Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy, and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radica ...

and John Reed, co-editors of the radical magazine ''

The Masses ''The Masses'' was a graphically innovative American magazine of socialist politics published monthly from 1911 until 1917, when federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription in the United Stat ...

'', asked him to write something humorous for their periodical. The result was a short satirical attack on

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

named ''The Heavenly Dialogue'', published in 1914. This became the first of a series of similar dialogues. Ten of these were published in ''

''. Following passage of the

Espionage Act of 1917 The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law enacted on June 15, 1917, shortly after the United States entered World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code ( ...

, ''The Masses'' was suppressed by the U. S. government on the grounds that it was detrimental to the war effort. Wood continued to write more discourses. After

, Max Eastman and others urged publication of the discourses in book form. In 1927, the Vanguard Press published a collection of forty-one of them under the title ''Heavenly Discourse''.

Content

The work is primarily a dialogue between

Satan Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood). In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the '' yetzer hara'', or ' ...

and

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

about contemporary issues. They are presented as friendly adversaries who are often in general agreement. God represents Wood's own perspective. A variety of other characters also join the conversation, including

angels An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...

Jesus Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...

, the

Czar of Russia This is a list of all reigning monarchs in the history of Russia. The list begins with the semi-legendary prince Rurik of Novgorod, sometime in the mid-9th century, and ends with Nicholas II, who abdicated in 1917, and was executed with his fa ...

Billy Sunday William Ashley Sunday (November 19, 1862 – November 6, 1935) was an American evangelist and professional baseball outfielder. He played for eight seasons in the National League before becoming the most influential American preacher during t ...

Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...

John Pierpont Morgan John Pierpont Morgan Sr. (April 17, 1837 – March 31, 1913) was an American financier and investment banker who dominated corporate finance on Wall Street throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. As the head of the banking firm that ...

Teddy Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), also known as Teddy or T.R., was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt previously was involved in New York politics, including serving as ...

Carrie Nation Caroline Amelia Nation (November 25, 1846June 9, 1911), often referred to as Carrie, Carry Nation, Carrie A. Nation, or Hatchet Granny, was an American who was a radical member of the temperance movement, which opposed alcohol before the advent ...

Sappho Sappho (; ''Sapphṓ'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; ) was an Ancient Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by music. In ancient times, Sapph ...

François Rabelais François Rabelais ( , ; ; born between 1483 and 1494; died 1553) was a French writer who has been called the first great French prose author. A Renaissance humanism, humanist of the French Renaissance and Greek scholars in the Renaissance, Gr ...

Margaret Sanger Margaret Sanger ( Higgins; September 14, 1879September 6, 1966) was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. She opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, founded Planned Parenthood, and was instr ...

, and

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

. Politically radical, the essays ridicule war,

prudishness A prude is a person with a very sensitive attitude and narrowness towards custom and morality. The word prude comes from the Old French word also meaning loyal, respectable or modest woman, which was the source of prude in the 18th century. Ac ...

patriotism Patriotism is the feeling of love, devotion, and a sense of attachment to one's country or state. This attachment can be a combination of different feelings for things such as the language of one's homeland, and its ethnic, cultural, politic ...

bigotry Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived social group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived (usually unfavourable) evaluation or classification of another person based on that pers ...

and

Christian theology Christian theology is the theology – the systematic study of the divine and religion – of Christianity, Christian belief and practice. It concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Ch ...

. Instead, they promoted

bohemianism Bohemianism is a social and cultural movement that has, at its core, a way of life away from society's conventional norms and expectations. The term originates from the French ''bohème'' and spread to the English-speaking world. It was used to ...

free love Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the State (polity), state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues we ...

pacifism Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ...

socialism Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

birth control Birth control, also known as contraception, anticonception, and fertility control, is the use of methods or devices to prevent pregnancy. Birth control has been used since ancient times, but effective and safe methods of birth control only be ...

, and

women's rights Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st c ...

. The satire of these essays mocks mainstream society and views it with skepticism. Titles of some of the discourses include ''Is God a Jew?,'' ''The United States Must Be Pure,'' and ''The Stupid Cannot Enter Heaven.'' Wood wrote ''Heavenly Discourse'' from the

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

radicalism of

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to the north, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the s ...

of which he was a part. In one of the essays, ''Billy Sunday meets God,'' Wood pokes at bourgeois morality by imagining Billy Sunday in

Heaven Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

, surprised and disappointed to find people he condemned there. Jesus responds to his complaints, and points out that he associated with drinkers and prostitutes. Heavenly discourse is one of very few Western texts from this era to mention the angel

Israfil Israfil (, ''ʾIsrāfīl) o''r Israfel Lewis, James R., Evelyn Dorothy Oliver, and S. Sisung Kelle, eds. 1996. ''Angels A to Z''. Visible Ink Press. . p. 224. is the angel who will blow the trumpet to signal ''Qiyamah'' (the Day of Judgment) in ...

Arab folklore Arab culture is the culture of the Arabs, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, in a region of the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab world. The various religions the Arabs have adopted throughout their ...

Reception

Although Wood wrote extensively, this was his only work to reach a wide audience. The book had a substantial impact on

Robert Paul Wolff Robert Paul Wolff (December 27, 1933 – January 6, 2025) was an American political philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wolff wrote widely on topics in political philosophy, including Marxism, tolera ...

and

Todd Gitlin Todd Alan Gitlin (January 6, 1943 – February 5, 2022) was an American sociologist, political activist and writer, novelist, and cultural commentator. He wrote about the mass media, politics, intellectual life, and the arts for both popular an ...

. Some American publications have called it a "classic". Kevin Starr wrote in 2002 that ''Heavenly Discourse'' now seems "pedestrian and heavy-handed" but affirms that it was daring in its time.

Notes

Citations

References

* * * * * * * * * * * *

External links

* Full text of
Heavenly Discourse
' at HathiTrust Digital Library 1927 books Satirical books