COMMENTARY
The Sanity of John Fetterman
Meir Y. Soloveichik
June 2025

Let us ponder the strange similarities linking the striking stories of Warder Cresson and John Fetterman. Ostensibly these two individuals, whose lives are separated by more than a century, have nothing to do with each other. Yet both embody, in their own way, archetypal American tales, in that they reflect the bonds between this country and the Jewish people and the way these bonds have endured despite the efforts of some to undo them. Warder Cresson’s 19th-century tale has already been told in these pages (“The Forgotten Proto-Zionist,” December 2019). The first person appointed American consul to Jerusalem, he was born a Quaker and proceeded as an adult to join the Shakers, an ecstatic form of Christianity. He then embraced Mormonism, then adopted the teachings of Seventh-day Adventists and then the teachings of the frontier Restorationist movement. READ MORE