16 AMERICAN HISTORY
THE
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By age 36, Cyrus Ingerson Scofield had failed magnificently. Accused
of forgery and embezzlement, he had slipped into an alcohol-soaked
despair. In 1879, he quit drinking, embraced Jesus Christ, and devoted
himself to evangelism—spreading the word about the importance of
personal salvation and biblical authority. Three decades later, he created
the Scofield Reference Bible, sometimes cited as a plinth of Protestant
fundamentalism. Conforming to a theological view known as pre-mil-
lennial dispensationalism, Scofield’s Bible presents history as epochs
governed by divine covenants. In the last epochs, for example, to fulfill
God’s plan, Jews must return to the Holy Land. Some scholars cite the
Scofield Bible as a factor that helped forged longstanding support among
American evangelicals for the nation of Israel.
Scofield’s life began in trauma: his mother died delivering him in 1843
in Tecumseh, Michigan. He was raised by his father and stepmother, and
when she too died, he moved at age 16
to Lebanon, Tennessee, to join his older
sisters. When the Civil War came, he
enlisted in the Confederate Army, serving
at Seven Pines and Antietam. He married
a Catholic and in St. Louis went to work
for her wealthy fur-trading family, acquir-
ing legal skills. The couple had two chil-
dren, and by 1869 Scofield was working in
Atchison, Kansas. In 1871 he was elected to
the Kansas legislature. In 1873, President
Ulysses S. Grant named him U.S. attorney
general of the District of Kansas, but within
six months political intrigue regarding vote
buying forced his resignation. In 1878, he
was jailed on charges of check forgery.
Battling the bottle, Scofield left Atchison
for St. Louis, where clergymen took him in
hand, support that led in 1880 to a local
preaching license. In 1882 his sermonizing
and outreach won him a chance as a pastor
at the First Congregational Church in Dallas,
Texas. In 1883, he and his long-estranged
wife divorced. Scofield never mentioned that
“mixed” marriage to his new community, and
later excluded his two daughters from that
union in his will. In 1884 he married a con-
gregant. He built First Congregational’s
enrollment from 12 to 500 members.
In 1886, Dwight Moody, an enterprising
evangelist and publisher, invited Scofield to
address a biblical conference in Northfield,
Massachusetts. The focus was a return to
basics: the authority of Scripture, acceptance
of Jesus Christ as savior, and the inevitability
of a period of earthly tribulation preceding the
Second Coming.
This orientation and its promise of unwaver-
ing truth resonated in the Civil War’s aftermath,
with its social, political, and economic upheav-
als. Modernity—along with the spread of evolu-
tionary theory presented by English naturalist
Charles Darwin—was shaking pillars of tradi-
tional authority. Reacting to historiographical
and scientific trends that undercut the notion
of the Bible as God’s unerring word, main-
stream Protestant denominations had begun to
read the Gospels in a forward-looking way,
positing that devotion to Christ’s teachings
leads to a better, more just world. Scofield and
BY SARAH RICHARDSON
Read All About It—Yourself
Cyrus Scofield believed it incumbent
on each Christian to share the Bible.