Charles McCrary
Last weekend I was in Philadelphia for the Annual Meeting of the Society for Historians of the
Early American Republic (
SHEAR). (See
here
for the program and here for Monica’s RiAH
post
highlighting the “religion” panels.) I presented on a panel on “Mobility and
the Making on Early National Religious Idenity,” with
Shari Rabin and
Roy Rogers.
This was my first SHEAR conference, but I doubt it will be my last. The overall
quality of papers was the best of any conference I’ve attended. Friday morning’s
session on “Faith, Politics, and Law After the Founding” was especially
thought-provoking. Also, I attended a reception for contributors to the
American Yawp, which is a great project that you should check
out if you haven’t already. Anyway, SHEAR is great; you should go.
American religioushistory was well represented at the conference. However, one of the most
generative aspects of the conference, for me, was the intermingling of various
subfields. Clearly there were a number of “religion panels” (and, Shari and I
noted, upon not leaving our seats for a few panels in a row, there was
something of a “religion room” where those panels were held.) Nevertheless, within
those panels and others not explicitly “religious,” most papers bridged
subfields skillfully. Perhaps one reason for this was the tight chronology to
which most panels kept. When scholars are able to focus in on a specific
time
and/or
place,
the
connections
between categories becomes more apparent.
 |
| A surveyor's camp |
With that in mind, I want to write a little bit about the President’s Plenary, “SHEAR meets STEM,”
which focused on four categories—science, technology, engineering, and math—and
their place, meanings, and uses in the early republic.
Adam
Nelson, Professor of Educational Policy Studies and History at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison, began by talking about “science” in the
context of a “global knowledge economy.” The form and function of science, he
argued, was defined and inflected by the form and function of the state. What
“scientists” (whoever they are in a given time and place) focus on has been
largely determined by what sort of research is being funded, especially by the
federal government. In the early republic, Nelson argued, American science
shifted from a more “cosmopolitan” vantage point to an emphasis on
“citizenship.” As Nelson demonstrated, almost as soon as American science had
blatantly broadcast the nationalist ideologies informing its projects, they
were obfuscated by the rhetoric of “pure,” or nonideological, science. Indeed,
this became the defining characteristic of science.
The conception of “pure” science worked, and American scientists were able to support state interests
while remaining ostensibly non-ideological. For instance—to use an example I’ve
written
about before—American geology shifted in the 1850s away from discussing
California as part of the Pacific to a more continental-based geology,
emphasizing the unity of the American continent. It just so happened that in
the interim, gold was discovered in California and it became a U.S. state, but
nevertheless the unity of the American continent was written into its features,
just as the formation of the Appalachians brought “
order
out of confusion.” In this way and others, the history of STEM provides not
just a metaphor for but an intertwined history with American religion and politics.
Science and religion, though of course sometimes in tension, often worked
together toward similar ends, especially in the nineteenth century.
While historians of
nineteenth-century American religion have focused on religious epistemology,
especially “common sense realism,” much more could be done to explore broader
contexts, the “global knowledge economy,” in which theologies and religious
movements were reasonable. This multifaceted approach should bring more actors
into our narratives. After listening to
Ann Johnson’s
fascinating talk on engineering, I was intrigued by the possible epistemological
overlaps between Methodist circuit riders, missionaries, and governmentally
funded surveyors.
Caitlin Rosenthal
discussed the history of math, specifically the increasing importance of
numbers in nineteenth-century Americans’ lives, as evidenced by the ubiquity
and indispensability of charts, such as those found in the
Ready Reckoner. Discussions of
biblical prophecy, Millerites, and dispensationalists, for instance, would be
incomplete without recognition of this history of quantification.
Seth
Rockman, in introducing the plenary panel, advised that we engage STEM—and
“historicize” it. “We take things that appear to be stable and timeless and
show otherwise,” he said. This is the point of doing history, regardless of our
topic, whether it’s religion or science or technology. These constructions are
complex process, not subject to subfield distinctions, not forged in isolation.
Thus, to write histories of American religion(s), we must situate them within,
or at least in relation to, other histories. That includes the histories of
science, technology, engineering, and math, as well as economics, business, politics,
foreign relations, and other topics too often absent from our work.
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