SOURCE: “The Development of a Christian Statesman,” in William Jennings Bryan: Missionary Isolationist, The University of Tennessee Press, No. 2, 1982, pp. 3-22.

In the following essay, Clements discusses the roots and outgrowth of Bryan's Christian-based politics and social beliefs.

When William Jennings Bryan was born, on March 19, 1860, in Salem, Illinois, nearly all Americans were preoccupied by the sectional crisis. Although the Civil War and its aftermath had little direct impact on the Bryan family, the crowding events of those years pushed aside all political issues except those having to do with the internal state of the country. Few Americans, including the Bryans, took much notice of what was happening beyond the borders of the United States. Nevertheless, although foreign policy seems never to have been a topic at the Bryan family dinner table, the bases for Bryan's later foreign policy positions were shaped in his youth.

To an extraordinary...