Mark Alton Barwise

Mark Alton Barwise (born 1881) was the only publicly practicing member of the Spiritualist religion known to have been elected to a state office in the United States. Born in Chester, Maine of a medianistic mother, Barwise became an attorney and nationally-prominent member of the National Spiritualist Association (N.S.A.).^[1] He wrote extensively on spiritualism, represented the church in court cases, served on its board of trustees, and became Curator of its Bureau of Phenomenal Evidence. Despite his leadership position in a religion outside the American mainstream, he was elected to the Maine House of Representatives from Bangor (Penobscot County) in 1921-24, and in 1925-26 to the Maine State Senate.

Barwise's political career was defined by his championing of a controversial amendment to the state constitution prohibiting the use of any public funds by private institutions. "The Barwise Bill" was widely interpreted as an attack on Maine's growing Catholic school system by the Protestant majority, and was called a "Klan measure" by one newspaper. Although Barwise's ties to the Ku Klux Klan (if any) are unknown, Maine saw significant Klan activity in the 1920s, directed against the local Catholic population, which the controversy surrounding the Barwise Bill only helped inflame. Though the bill was defeated in the Maine House in 1923 after heated debate, Barwise re-introduced a modified version of it again in 1925 when he entered the Senate, where it was defeated a second time. He may have been considered an effective sponsor and spokesman for an anti-Catholic measure precisely because he was not a mainstream Protestant.^[2] The year Barwise left state office (1925) his Senate colleague Owen Brewster, who had introduced a similar bill on the same issue, was elected Governor of Maine with Klan support.

Despite its sectarian effects, the Barwise Bill may have originated more from Barwise's personal convictions (as a member of a non-mainstream religion) that church and state be fully separated. He'd begun his political career, in 1921, by introducing a bill to repeal an old yet widely-violated law requiring businesses to close on Sunday. This was as unpopular with the Protestant majority as with Catholics, and was defeated in the Maine House by a wide margin (107 to 15).^[3]

Barwise published numerous essays and short articles on spiritualism, including the 64-page booklet "A Preface to Spiritualism" (1938), and the chapter on spiritualism in Charles Samuel Braden's Varieties of American Religion (1936). With Rev. Thomas Grimshaw, Superintendent of Education of the N.S.A., he organized a correspondence course on spiritualism in the 1930s.^[4] He was also associated with "Camp Etna", a prominent spiritualist summer camp outside of Bangor in Etna, Maine, whose charismatic leader was the medium Mary Vanderbilt. Barwise contributed an essay to Vanderbilt's 1921 festschrift, Mary S. Vanderbilt: A Twentieth Century Seer (1921).^[5]

References

1. ^ National Spiritualist Association, Centennial Book of Modern Spiritualism in America (1948), p. 123
2. ^ Lewiston Evening Journal, Nov. 16, 1926, p. 2; Ibid, May 15, 1923, p. 17
3. ^ Lewiston Daily Sun, Feb. 28, 1971, p. 17
4. ^ National Spiritualist Association, Centennial Book of Modern Spiritualism in America (1948), p. 116
5. ^ Mary E. Cadwallader, ed. Mary S. Vanderbilt: A Twentieth Century Seer (1921)

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Name	Barwise, Mark Alton
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Date of birth	1881
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