Science and Place 395Central to Whitla’s diagnosis of Europe’s current crisis was the “moral
leprosy” that he believed had infected the Church itself. Unperturbed by
evolutionary biology and other scientifi c theories, he vigorously denounced
the “deadly” and “poisonous” Graf- Wellhausen theory of the Pentateuch.
It was no accident that such doctrines had emanated from Germany. That
old enemy stood highest in the international circle of sacrilege. The result
was that Germany exhibited widespread “moral myopia” and a craving
after “world- empire.”^60 And it was to this cause that he later traced “the
chaos and desolation of Europe resulting from the late world- war.”^61 The
fractured geography of postwar Europe was a direct result of the spiri-
tual bankruptcy of Germanic space. It was in pursuit of his campaign
to rout these “diabolical” forces of rationalism that Whitla called upon
Newton. This was the context in which Newton needed to be read. When
readers witnessed for themselves how carefully Newton interpreted the
symbolic language of the Bible, Whitla wanted them to recognize an ally
in a continuing campaign against the evils of Teutonic intellectual arro-
gance. Newton was the best possible antidote to those Higher Critics who
rewrote chronology, deconstructed authors, and mythologized history.
While Whitla staged Newton as a partner in the culture confl icts of
postwar Europe, he was not blind to the potential uses of Newton’s text
in the even more local political context of 1920s Belfast. His introduc-
tory refl ections were thus intended to manage the local space of textual
rendezvous. Whitla himself, it turns out, had an active political career. He
was a strong Unionist; signed Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant in
1912, which opposed Home Rule and affi rmed loyalty to the Crown; and
was elected as a member of the Westminster Parliament in 1918. Indeed,
in March 1912, speaking from the chair at a mass rally of Methodists in
Belfast’s Ulster Hall, he called his co- religionists to unite “as one man in
the deliberate conviction that Home Rule means disaster and ruin to our
native land, and irreparable injury to our Church and to the civil and re-
ligious liberty which we and our fathers have enjoyed under the impartial
freedom of the British fl ag.”^62
During the winter of 1921–1922, when he delivered his prophecy lec-
tures, the new Northern Ireland state was struggling to life. And his fi rst
address took place in the midst of a tumultuous week.^63 “Week of Terror
in Belfast,” screamed a newspaper headline. “Dastardly Bomb Outrages.
Sinn Fein Snipers Active. 20 Persons Killed. 76 Wounded.”^64 The week
before, this same paper had run a piece titled “Dangers Confronting Us
Viewed in the Light of Church History,” in which the author fastened on
the role of the Catholic Church. Because of the papacy’s claims to “power
in temporal things, over all kingdoms and empires,” he could only con-