Download Sectarian Nation

“Sectarian Nation”: Religious Diversity in Antebellum America
Curtis D. Johnson
Curtis D. Johnson is associate professor of history at Mount St. Mary's University.
He specializes in nineteenth-century social and religious history. His publications
include, Redeeming America: Evangelicals and the Road to Civil War (Chicago:
Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1993), which examines the cultural impact of evangelical
Protestantism on antebellum America.
In The American Democrat (1838), James Fenimore Cooper criticized many aspects of
this nation's culture, but none more so than religion. “In America the taint of
sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy
of the Deity,… the pride and vanity of human reason… pollute our worship [and
churches become] merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation
is sectarian, rather than Christian” (1).
In many ways, Cooper's description of American “sectarianism” still resonates. Now,
however,
the
multitude
of
religious
groups,
each
proclaiming
its
superior
understanding of the “truth,” is applauded in the name of diversity. In a world where
state-mandated beliefs and state-supported religious oppression are common, most
Americans are proud of this nation's combination of government neutrality with vibrant
voluntarism, a mix that encourages this wide variety of religious perspectives. But the
accommodation of “truth” and democracy has never been easy. In the early republic,
the religious free market not only included diversity, but moved through distinct
stages of competition, conflict, and compromise.
[T]he accommodation of “truth” and democracy has never been easy. In the early
republic, the religious free market not only included diversity, but moved through
distinct stages of competition, conflict, and compromise.
The Foundation
Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia was one of the most
important documents to emerge out of the Confederation period. Not only did
Jefferson seek to end the Anglican church's monopoly of state financing, but he also
wanted to terminate all government support for organized religion. Jefferson's
proposal was adopted in 1786, became a model for a similar clause in the Northwest
Ordinance of 1787, and eventually inspired key clauses in the Constitution's First
Amendment.
1
Jefferson's statute also changed the face of American religion. Ironically, revoking
government support for religion helped make the United States one of the most overtly
religious nations in the Western world. Separating church and state leveled the playing
field. A religious tradition or denomination could no longer gain a privileged position
by having the state weaken or eliminate its competition. Furthermore, successful
American religious movements would be the ones that could best adapt to the
religious free market and gain adherents. That was the theory, at least. In reality,
religious groups sometimes sought government assistance in achieving their goals,
and occasionally they used intimidation and violence to discourage their competitors.
During the early nineteenth century, the United States experienced the Second Great
Awakening. The defining event of the awakening was a series of evangelical religious
revivals which began in the late 1790s, drew national attention in the early 1800s,
peaked around the early 1830s, and occurred sporadically up to and through the Civil
War. During the awakening, tens of thousands of people experienced religious
conversions and joined evangelical churches. Overall, American church membership
grew from about one-tenth of all adults in 1800 to one-third of all adults by 1850.
The importance, however, of the Second Great Awakening went beyond rising church
membership. Old ideas fell into disfavor,and new ones took their place. In particular,
Americans were enthralled by the notion of choice. In theory, white Americans could
now choose their marriage partners, occupation, location, and politicalparty. Not
surprisingly, predestination (salvation dependent on God's predetermined decision to
send a person to heaven or hell) lost ground, even among Calvinists, as the Methodist
or Arminian doctrine of free will (salvation dependent on one's choice to accept Jesus
as Savior) carried the day. But choice could go beyond choosing Jesus; by the early
nineteenth century, religious consumers had a dazzling array of religious movements
from which to choose.
The Major Competing Groups
The principal antebellum religious movements can be divided into four groups. The
first group, the evangelical Protestants, collectively dominated the era. Yet their
influence was mitigated by powerful internal divisions. While agreeing on the centrality
of the Word of God (the Bible), the necessity of the Second Birth or rebirth at
conversion, the need for personal piety, and the importance of the Second Coming of
Christ in addition to other standard Christian doctrines, antebellum evangelicals were
deeply divided on how these doctrines should be interpreted.
2
Formalist evangelicals were obsessed by order and prescribed forms in worship,
society, and their personal lives (2). This group, comprising about one-fifth of all
evangelicals, was dominated by middling-to-upper class northern Presbyterians,
Congregationalists, and Low Church Episcopalians. Many formalists believed in the
National Covenant, the notion that God had a special relationship with the United
States and that God would bless this nation only insofar as it was collectively obedient
to divine commands. Many formalists believed that churches, voluntary associations,
and government had to cooperate in ensuring that the entire nation was moral,
temperate, and observed the Ten Commandments. According to covenant theology,
American failure to live up to the covenant could result in the Almighty wrath-fully
destroying the entire nation.
Antiformalist evangelicals opposed the formalists on virtually everything other than the
most basic evangelical doctrines. The antiformalists, who celebrated freedom from
prescribed forms, made up three-fifths of all evangelicals and were most frequently
lower-to-middling class southern Baptists, Methodists, and Disciples of Christ.
Whereas formalists liked carefully constructed sermons read from prepared texts,
antiformalists preferred preachers who specialized in extemporaneous emotionalism.
Whereas the formalists believed higher education was essential, most antiformalists
were suspicious of colleges and opposed seminaries altogether. While many formalists
supported
cross-denominational
national
associations
(and,
if
necessary,
governmental action) to do everything from rescuing prostitutes to restricting slavery,
most antiformalists supported only local efforts to promote morality.
African Americans made up the final fifth of antebellum evangelicals. Primarily Baptist
and Methodist, nearly all black leaders were associated with black evangelicalism. while
many slaveholding whites viewed Christianity as a way to pacify slaves, blacks in the
North and South, free and slave, fashioned a faith based on their own experiences,
their African heritage, and evangelical doctrine. Not surprisingly, African American
evangelicalism focused on liberation and drew inspiration from the story of the Exodus
in the Bible.
Together, these evangelical groups interacted with each other and with other religious
movements to keep the American republic in constant religious turmoil during the
antebellum era.
3
Several varieties of traditionalist Christians comprised the second major group. These
Christians maintained close ties to Europe long after settling in America, saw
themselves in historical terms, and were frequently ethnically-based.
Roman Catholics were the most important traditionalist group. While there were only
35,000 American Catholics in 1789, they were the nation's largest domination by
1860. Most of this growth was fueled by massive Irish and German immigration at
mid-century. This huge influx forever changed the nature of the American church.
While some Catholics wanted the church to assimilate into American culture, including
John Ireland, Isaac Hecker, and Orestes Brownson, they were outmaneuvered by ardent
traditionalists, such as John Hughes, who wanted to maintain a separate Catholic
presence in the United States. The traditionalists won the internal power struggle for
many reasons, including fears of undue Protestant influence, an influx of Irish Catholic
priests, the desire of the first generation to maintain ethnic traditions from Europe,
and political maneuvering which gained favor with the Vatican.
There were also a number of traditionalist Protestant groups who drew their identity
from their European antecedents. German Lutherans, English Episcopalians, and
Dutch-speaking Reformed groups all adhered to creeds and prayer books written in
the old countries. Each of these groups was split, like the Catholic church, between
those who drew strength from their traditional European heritage and those who
wanted to accommodate to the American religious landscape.
Non-Trinitarian monotheists comprised a third group. Not all antebellum religious
groups were Christian or accepted the divinity of Jesus Christ. Four important groups
maintained an older, unified monotheistic idea of God, focused on observing moral
law, and were frequently active in efforts to alleviate the suffering of others. The oldest
of these groups was the Jews, who steadfastly observed the teachings of the Torah and
Talmud, but they were small in number until mid-century. The Unitarians focused on
the oneness of God, believed that Jesus was a great teacher but hardly divine, and were
often active in reform activities regarding education (Horace Mann), women's rights
(Lucy Stone), and abolitionism (William Lloyd Garrison). while criticizing the Unitarians'
“cold rationalism,” non-Trinitarian Transcendentalists, such as Margaret Fuller and
Henry David Thoreau, were involved in social action ranging from women's rights to
opposition to the Mexican War. The Society of Friends or Quakers believed that the
“inner light” was common to all human beings. Hicksite Quakers, who came closest to
preserving the teaching of founder George Fox, did not view Jesus as divine but instead
4
saw him as the best example of how to be shaped by one's internal spark of divinity.
Because all humans have the “inner light” within them, Quakers taught that people of
both sexes, of all classes, and of all races were equal in the eyes of God. Not
surprisingly, Quakers were among the earliest abolitionists, and some antebellum
Quakers (Sarah and Angelina Grimké) sought to liberate both African Americans and
women from their oppressors.
A fourth group included diverse American originals. As one would expect, a level
playing field combined with the lack of government interference opened the door to a
wide range of religious innovations (3). Of all four major groups, the American
originals received the largest sustained evangelical opposition. Native American
religions, which evolved thousands of years ago, honored the Great Spirit, used
shamanism to access the spiritual world, and had a reverential attitude toward nature.
Adherents to Native American beliefs were persecuted, not so much for the content of
their religious ideas, but because they were indigenous peoples who blocked white
expansion. Ironically, many of the people most interested in helping indigenous
groups survive the white onslaught were also interested in converting them to
European-style Christianity. Numerous Methodist, Moravian, Congregational, and
Baptist missionaries sharply criticized Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy. As the
century progressed, white Protestants increased their efforts to “civilize” and
“Christianize” native peoples.
African American churches can be viewed as American originals that combined African
practices and evangelical Christianity. while African American evangelicals upheld basic
Christian doctrines, black practices such as storytelling, the ring shout, seizure by the
Holy Spirit, and injunctions against dancing and fiddle-playing all had connections to
African culture. Slaves, dissatisfied with watered-down slaveholder Christianity, often
met separately in cabins and hush or hush arbors to worship authentically on their
own. When slaveholders broke up such meetings, the punishments could range from
severe floggings to death.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the most successful of the white
American originals. Organized by Joseph Smith in the early 1830s, the Latter-day
Saints claimed that Jesus had visited North America soon after his resurrection. They
asserted that the native peoples, descendents of the ancient Hebrew patriarch Lehi,
accepted Jesus' message, only to have an evil faction destroy the faithful a few
centuries later. The Book of Mormon, which describes the above conflict, became the
5
central scripture along with the Bible for Smith's Latter-day Saints. Under Smith and
later under the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the Mormons
organized highly-disciplined churches which emphasized self-help, mutual assistance,
family values, and a strict moral code.
Not all originals were successful. The Shakers peaked with around four thousand
members in the 1820s and declined numerically thereafter. Early on, when evangelicals
perceived the movement to be a genuine threat, Protestants occasionally used violence
against Mother Ann Lee and her followers. After 1810, opponents abandoned violence
(with the exception of riots in 1825) and attacked the Shakers through legal action and
public ridicule (4). Perhaps Robert Mathews, founder of the Kingdom of Matthias, was
the most spectacular religious failure in early nineteenth-century America. His
innovative sexual arrangements and his attempts to raise the dead certainly created a
sensation in early New York City, but at his peak, he had less than thirty followers.
From Camp Meeting to Charles Finney: Competition among Evangelicals: 1800–
1835
Early in the nineteenth century, the primary American religious conflicts were among
evangelicals. Antiformalist Baptists and Methodists were better able to organize and
recruit on the frontier than were the formalist Presbyterians and Congregationalists.
Methodist circuit riders traveled to the people, and Baptist congregations ordained
their own ministers who usually worked at another job until the congregation was large
enough to support a full-time minister. Most importantly, Arminian theology, with its
emphasis on free will, resonated with frontier residents in a way that Calvinism never
could. As frontier preacher Peter Cartwright observed, “the illiterate Methodist
preachers actually set the world on fire,… while [the Calvinists] were lighting their
matches” (5).
Kentucky's 1801 Cane Ridge camp meeting was the most remarkable religious event
early in the century. Noted for its unusual religious exercises (converts sang, jerked,
groaned, shouted, or collapsed in the throes of religious conversion), the Cane Ridge
revival brought hundreds of new believers into evangelical churches. After 1810, camp
meetings lost many of their eccentricities but continued to be very successful in
promoting emotional conversions.
In the 1820s and 1830s, Charles Finney, a New York lawyer turned preacher,
successfully reoriented formalist revivalism. While maintaining his Presbyterian
connections, Finney introduced his New Measures which borrowed the emotionalism,
6
the common-sense speaking style, the inclusion of women in public prayer meetings,
and the “anxious seat” (a designated area for potential converts) from the Methodists.
Most importantly, he took an Arminian stance on the subject of personal salvation.
Finney's novel message and methods had a powerful impact on his Calvinist audiences.
Soon evangelists were using Finney's techniques and theology throughout the
Northeast. Even though these preachers brought thousands of new members into
formalist churches by the mid-1830s, many Calvinists remained unconvinced. The
Presbyterian Church formally split into Old School (anti-New Measures) and New
School (pro-New Measures) denominations in 1837.
Compromise among Evangelicals, but Opposition to Non-Evangelicals: 1830–1855
With many formalists adopting antiformalist evangelistic techniques and in the process
toning them down significantly, the competition between the two groups dissipated.
There was an evangelical consensus—at least among whites—about the means of
salvation and rough agreement on America's future, even if there was disagreement on
government's role in promoting public morality. Formalists even invited antiformalist
leaders to serve on the numerous voluntary associations designed to spread
Christianity, education, and high moral standards. While antiformalists were generally
skeptical of such offers and preferred to work under the auspices of their own
denominations, the bitterness of earlier decades was largely over. As Protestant leader
Charles Hodge stated in 1829, Americans had “one language, one literature, essentially
one religion, and one common soul” (6).
Having achieved a rough consensus among themselves by the 1830s, evangelicals
united in opposition to two major “threats” to the future of the republic. When the
Roman Catholic Church became the country's largest denomination, many evangelicals
were afraid that Catholics would place loyalty to the Pope above their patriotic duties.
Nativist evangelicals argued that Catholic monasticism was secretive, violated personal
choice (in that some women were supposedly forcedto become nuns against their will),
and was a haven of debauchery. Anti-Catholic riots were common along the East
Coast, and several convents were destroyed by fire in the 1830s. Nativism peaked in
the mid-1850s, when the American (or Know-Nothing) Party gained brief prominence
with its anti-alcohol, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic platform.
Further west, evangelicals were alarmed by the new American religion, Mormonism, or
the Latter-day Saints. Reacting to rumors of secret rituals, concentrated power, unfair
business practices, and polygamy, Protestants drove the Mormons from Ohio, Missouri,
7
and Illinois where Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob, before Brigham Young led
them to Deseret (Utah), a safe haven in the West.
Intra-Sectional Compromise Leading to Conflict between Northern and Southern
Religion, 1840–1860
By the 1840s, the issue of slavery was beginning to dominate public discourse. Some
conservatives wanted to define abolitionism as a “political” issue which should not be
discussed within evangelical churches. However, most evangelicals were obsessed with
the topic, and antislavery controversy soon split the major denominations. The
Presbyterians split in 1837, with the New School more open to anti-slavery activity; the
Baptists split into regional denominations in 1844; and the Methodists followed suit a
year later. In 1857, the New School Presbyterians split into northern and southern
branches.
When the slavery controversy divided denominations sectionally, it blurred earlier
doctrinal divisions. In 1816, Richard Allen of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
and other northern black evangelicals joined with Quaker abolitionists in rejecting
colonization in favor of immediate emancipation. By the 1830s, the abolitionist
movement included African American evangelicals, non-Trinitarian monotheists
(primarily Unitarians and Quakers), and white evangelicals (primarily formalists). Even
though the American Antislavery Society split in 1840 partly over religious matters but
more so over tactics, a growing number of northern church people judged each other
primarily on their moral stance regarding slavery, rather than on doctrinal issues. By
the 1850s, a wide range of religious northerners agreed with Frederick Douglass that,
“the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes” (7).
A similar process was at work in the South. In the late eighteenth century, the
Methodist and Baptist denominations formally opposed slavery, while the Episcopal
church
generally
accepted
the
institution.
In
the
early
nineteenth
century,
antiformalists gradually abandoned their antislavery stance as their members rose in
financial and social status and accepted the racial views of their traditionalist
neighbors. Antiformalists believed that a literal interpretation of the Bible, including
those passages discussing slavery, was always the best interpretation, a factor which
also pushed them in a proslavery direction. By the 1830s, white southern evangelical
and traditionalist Christians (Episcopalians and Catholics) largely agreed that slavery
was ordained by God. As in the North, it was one's stance on slavery that demonstrated
8
one's
true
Christian
status,
not
the
doctrinal
positions
of
one's
particular
denomination.
By the 1850s, many Christians in both sections were willing to use violence. In the
North, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act convinced a majority of black evangelicals
that violence, not the political process, was the only hope. White evangelicals such as
Henry Ward Beecher and John Brown acted on their belief that force was necessary to
destroy human bondage. In the South, lynch mobs murdered preachers who dared to
criticize slavery publicly. When the Civil War began, northern and southern religionists
had already been in verbal and occasional physical conflict for nearly two decades.
Oddly, there was more cross-denominational unity in America on the eve of the Civil
War than there had been at any point since the American Revolution. Northerners put
aside their religious differences to unify against southerners, and the South responded
in kind to the North. In the midst of American religious diversity, compromise had
replaced competition in preparation for the conflict yet to come.
Figures and Tables
“The Aim of Pope Pius IX,” from a Protestant nativist flyer advertising the anti-Catholic novel,
Danger in the Dark (1854). In the cartoon, the pope destroys the U.S. Constitution and
American eagle while stomping on the U.S. flag. (Image courtesy of Library of Congress.)
Endnotes have been omitted.
Copyright © 2008, Organization of American Historians
9