Paul Harvey
Our contributing editor Phillip Luke Sinitiere has been going on a blogging bonanza, with his new course blog in American religious history "One Nation, Many Faiths," part III of his interview with historian Thomas Kidd about Kidd's work on the Great Awakening, and a year-long retrospective interview with Ed Blum about W. E. B. DuBois, American Prophet, which also features a roundup of interviews, revews, etc. about the book. Thanks to Phil for this blogging feast.
Showing posts with label religion and the american revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religion and the american revolution. Show all posts
Monday, July 14, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
God's Country
by Randall Stephens
Here's Fea:
It is easy to understand why on the The Light and the Glory has had such staying power in the Evangelical world. While mainstream texts treat American history as if God did not exist, Marshall and Manuel offer a narrative of early American history focused on the sovereignty of God. The authors also tell their story in compelling prose. They occasionally inject their own voices into the narrative to explain how they crafted their argument through research and prayer.
Fea also observes:
Because Marshall and Manuel sought facts from history that seemed to fit their thesis, their narrative is dominated by the story of early New England.Jamestown is covered and dismissed in one chapter, and other colonies (such as William Penn’s experiment in Pennsylvania) and religious movements (such as the Baptists and Anglicans) that shaped early American life are ignored.
I emailed John and asked how Lord Dunmore's revolutionary proclamation freeing slaves who would fight for the Brits would fit into this story. Or, what are Christians in Virginia to make of the deadly combo of tobacco and slaves that so boosted the flagging Chesapeake colony? The triumphalism and selective literalism of so much providential history should warn off Christians. In addition to that one must acknowledge that things change over time. Old Scratch at work in late 17th century Salem is not the same devil that many Christians believe in today. And what made sense to 18th or 19th century Christians might seem utterly wrong or immoral to today's evangelicals. All that doesn't seem to bother providentialists. Certainly, the history writing of D. James Kennedy, Newt Gingrich, David Barton, and others is a creative endeavor. Many conservatives, Christians and others, are looking for a usable past. (See this Harper's reading I posted on my Early Republic syllabus site: Mark A Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America's Porvidential History.) Such efforts still seem senseless to the uninitiated.
Religion in American History contributing editor John Fea has written an insightful piece on contemporary Christian
providential views of history. ("Thirty Years of Light & Glory," Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, July/Agust 2008. Thanks to Don Yerxa, my colleague here at ENC, for pointing me to the review.) Fea highlights the work of Peter Marshall, son of Peter Marshall the famous chaplain to the United States Senate. Peter the younger has reportedly sold nearly a million copies of his 1977 book The Light and the Glory, co-authored with David Manuel. (I'm green with envy. Why don't people care this much about southern pentecostals?) Like Hal Lindsey's mega-selling apocalyptic romp, Late Great Planet Earth, or Rick Warren's soulfood for hungry Christians, The Purpose Driven Life, Light and the Glory does not come up on the radar screens of academics. Yet...
providential views of history. ("Thirty Years of Light & Glory," Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, July/Agust 2008. Thanks to Don Yerxa, my colleague here at ENC, for pointing me to the review.) Fea highlights the work of Peter Marshall, son of Peter Marshall the famous chaplain to the United States Senate. Peter the younger has reportedly sold nearly a million copies of his 1977 book The Light and the Glory, co-authored with David Manuel. (I'm green with envy. Why don't people care this much about southern pentecostals?) Like Hal Lindsey's mega-selling apocalyptic romp, Late Great Planet Earth, or Rick Warren's soulfood for hungry Christians, The Purpose Driven Life, Light and the Glory does not come up on the radar screens of academics. Yet...Here's Fea:
It is easy to understand why on the The Light and the Glory has had such staying power in the Evangelical world. While mainstream texts treat American history as if God did not exist, Marshall and Manuel offer a narrative of early American history focused on the sovereignty of God. The authors also tell their story in compelling prose. They occasionally inject their own voices into the narrative to explain how they crafted their argument through research and prayer.
Fea also observes:
Because Marshall and Manuel sought facts from history that seemed to fit their thesis, their narrative is dominated by the story of early New England.Jamestown is covered and dismissed in one chapter, and other colonies (such as William Penn’s experiment in Pennsylvania) and religious movements (such as the Baptists and Anglicans) that shaped early American life are ignored.
I emailed John and asked how Lord Dunmore's revolutionary proclamation freeing slaves who would fight for the Brits would fit into this story. Or, what are Christians in Virginia to make of the deadly combo of tobacco and slaves that so boosted the flagging Chesapeake colony? The triumphalism and selective literalism of so much providential history should warn off Christians. In addition to that one must acknowledge that things change over time. Old Scratch at work in late 17th century Salem is not the same devil that many Christians believe in today. And what made sense to 18th or 19th century Christians might seem utterly wrong or immoral to today's evangelicals. All that doesn't seem to bother providentialists. Certainly, the history writing of D. James Kennedy, Newt Gingrich, David Barton, and others is a creative endeavor. Many conservatives, Christians and others, are looking for a usable past. (See this Harper's reading I posted on my Early Republic syllabus site: Mark A Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America's Porvidential History.) Such efforts still seem senseless to the uninitiated.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Royalism and Savagery in the New Common-Place
By John Fea
The July 2008 Common-Place went on-line yesterday. There is not much on religion here, but two book reviews caught my eye. First, Kathleen DuVal reviews Peter Silver's Bancroft-Prize winning Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. This is the story of the violent relationship between the Scots-Irish (mostly) and native Americans on the Pennsylvania frontier. I have given the book a quick skim (perhaps I will give it my own review here when I eventually get around to reading it) and I think the readers of our blog might find it interesting. In many ways, the conflict on the eighteenth-century Pennsylvania frontier was a religious and racial war, with the white Presbyterians displaying savagery toward the Indians, and white Quakers suffering persecution for defending the natives and advocating for peace. Duval writes:
Silver's superb analysis and stunning prose create unsettling implications for other times of war. Lambasting Quakers' efforts at peace and toleration as "collusion with killers" (108) and accusing thoughtful people of being "tasteless" (85) for discussing context when white bodies had been damaged—these attacks on reason are hardly confined to eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. In Silver's skilled hands, they are both historically specific and frighteningly timeless.
The other review is of Brendan McConville's The Kings Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776. (See my coverage of the book on this blog and my HNN Review). Benjamin Irvin writes:
Readers who wish to burn their own golden calves must lace up their boots, for McConville ranges far and wide. His analysis of rough music and skimmington as rituals for the enforcement of early American gender norms ranks among the very best treatments of the subject. And yet not until a belated and maddeningly brief discussion of patriarchy and family roles does McConville relate those folk customs to the rise and fall of royal America. (Would that the Elizabethtown Regulars who flogged a notorious wife beater on his "Posteriors" had instead branded the royal arms on that same spot [183].) Similarly, McConville's chapter on imperial reform offers a fruitful exploration of the many imaginative proposals floated by imperial consolidators for the reorganization of Britain's eighteenth-century dominions. Aligning this book with a late renaissance in imperial history, this chapter points the reader toward a breathtaking vista of Albion and Indian what-might-have-beens. It further discloses certain colonists' willingness to resolve their political grievances within a constitutional framework, a testament to their thorough integration into the British Empire. And yet this chapter stands apart from the rest of the book in its detachment from the ceremonial and material culture by which British North Americans avouched devotion to the Crown.
I have been spent the last week or so in the archives reading the letters of Anglican priests. The combination of Irvin's review and my own findings has reminded me that there was a very vibrant religious royal culture in early America. But the concerns of Anglican clergymen about those pesky "Dissenters" also suggests that this culture was constantly under attack. Whatever the case, McConville's work will serve as a staring point for some of my own work.
(Also of note: Lloyd Pratt reviews Matthew P. Brown's The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading and Book Culture in Early New England).
The July 2008 Common-Place went on-line yesterday. There is not much on religion here, but two book reviews caught my eye. First, Kathleen DuVal reviews Peter Silver's Bancroft-Prize winning Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America. This is the story of the violent relationship between the Scots-Irish (mostly) and native Americans on the Pennsylvania frontier. I have given the book a quick skim (perhaps I will give it my own review here when I eventually get around to reading it) and I think the readers of our blog might find it interesting. In many ways, the conflict on the eighteenth-century Pennsylvania frontier was a religious and racial war, with the white Presbyterians displaying savagery toward the Indians, and white Quakers suffering persecution for defending the natives and advocating for peace. Duval writes:
Silver's superb analysis and stunning prose create unsettling implications for other times of war. Lambasting Quakers' efforts at peace and toleration as "collusion with killers" (108) and accusing thoughtful people of being "tasteless" (85) for discussing context when white bodies had been damaged—these attacks on reason are hardly confined to eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. In Silver's skilled hands, they are both historically specific and frighteningly timeless.
The other review is of Brendan McConville's The Kings Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688-1776. (See my coverage of the book on this blog and my HNN Review). Benjamin Irvin writes:
Readers who wish to burn their own golden calves must lace up their boots, for McConville ranges far and wide. His analysis of rough music and skimmington as rituals for the enforcement of early American gender norms ranks among the very best treatments of the subject. And yet not until a belated and maddeningly brief discussion of patriarchy and family roles does McConville relate those folk customs to the rise and fall of royal America. (Would that the Elizabethtown Regulars who flogged a notorious wife beater on his "Posteriors" had instead branded the royal arms on that same spot [183].) Similarly, McConville's chapter on imperial reform offers a fruitful exploration of the many imaginative proposals floated by imperial consolidators for the reorganization of Britain's eighteenth-century dominions. Aligning this book with a late renaissance in imperial history, this chapter points the reader toward a breathtaking vista of Albion and Indian what-might-have-beens. It further discloses certain colonists' willingness to resolve their political grievances within a constitutional framework, a testament to their thorough integration into the British Empire. And yet this chapter stands apart from the rest of the book in its detachment from the ceremonial and material culture by which British North Americans avouched devotion to the Crown.
I have been spent the last week or so in the archives reading the letters of Anglican priests. The combination of Irvin's review and my own findings has reminded me that there was a very vibrant religious royal culture in early America. But the concerns of Anglican clergymen about those pesky "Dissenters" also suggests that this culture was constantly under attack. Whatever the case, McConville's work will serve as a staring point for some of my own work.
(Also of note: Lloyd Pratt reviews Matthew P. Brown's The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading and Book Culture in Early New England).
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Way of Improvement Leads to a Website and Blog
Paul Harvey Our contributing editor John Fea has set up a blog and website for his book The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Phillip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America. Here's the description of the book from the website:
The Way of Improvement Leads Home traces the short but fascinating life of Philip Vickers Fithian, one of the most prolific diarists in early America. Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey, he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed destined to inherit. Fithian longed for something more—to improve himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility possible. While Fithian is best known for the diary that he wrote in 1773-74 while working as a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation of Robert Carter, this first full biography moves beyond his experience in the Old Dominion to examine his inner life, his experience in the early American backcountry, his love affair with Elizabeth Beatty, and his role as a Revolutionary War chaplain.
From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters—a transatlantic intellectual community sustained through sociability, print, and the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters was above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. Although Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he constantly struggled to reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. As John Fea argues, it was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections and enabled him to live a life worthy of a man of letters.
From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters—a transatlantic intellectual community sustained through sociability, print, and the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters was above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. Although Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he constantly struggled to reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. As John Fea argues, it was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections and enabled him to live a life worthy of a man of letters.
Here is some more information on John's article in the Journal of American History a few years back, which previewed the book:
In conjunction with an article I published about Fithian in 2003, the Journal of American History put hundreds of pages of Fithian's writings on-line. The site, which is part of the journal's "Teaching the JAH" feature, includes the article and study questions suitable for the high school and undergraduate classroom. I will try to get a link to these writings on the book website soon.
And here's a preview of John's thoughts on the question on the relationship of the Great Awakening to the American Revolution, as well as the question of the "evangelical synthesis" in American history:
Some of my thoughts here, which I hope to develop a bit more later at "Religion and American History," deal with the idea, popular among many historians, that the First Great Awakening, the great evangelical religious revival of the 1740s, had something to do with the coming of the American Revolution. I do not address this question directly in The Way of Improvement Leads Home, but I do imply that the enthusiasm and revival evangelicalism of the Great Awakening had little effect on the way Presbyterians such as Philip Vickers Fithian understood the Revolution. In fact, I suggest in the book that it was actually the reaction against the Great Awakening that had the most profound influence on the Presbyterian response to the American Revolution. (And this Presbyterian response was significant. Remember that George III called the American Revolution a "Presbyterian rebellion.").
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Born Again History?
JOHN FEA
Paul's last post on Clifton's book and John Turner's comment about Jon Butler and the "evangelical synthesis" really struck a chord with me since I have been thinking about this historiographical trend for the past several months in light of some of my current work in early America. I had planned to write a series of posts on this in the next few weeks, but I think the time is right to jump in at this juncture.
Back in 1994 Butler gave a paper at the OAH entitled "Born Again History?" (I do not think he ever published the piece--at least not in this form or by this title). In his own provocative way Butler argued that the so-called evangelical sythesis has not only come to be the dominant paradigm for understanding American religious history, but has become the dominant paradigm for understanding much of American history as a whole. He notes how evangelicalism is used by historians to explain the coming of the American Revolution, post-war republicanism, antebellum social reform, the family, abolitionism, 19th century women's culture, foreign policy, race and the South, populism, progressivism, the post-Watergate presidency, conservatism, and the list goes on. (All one has to do is read the archives of this blog to see that this is still a predominant approach to understanding the American past). Butler, as many of our readers know, is highly critical of this approach and has offered what I think is a sometimes helpful corrective to the evangelical synthesis.
In the time frame that I know best--the period between the First Great Awakening (roughly 1740) and the American Revolution (roughly 1789)--this evangelical synthesis dominates the field. Butler argued strongly against the connection between the Great Awakening and the Revolution in Awash in a Sea of Faith and elsewhere, but it almost seems as if historians (and I am talking off the top of my head, correct me if I am wrong) have completely ignored him. (John Murrin's 1983 classic "No Awakening, No Revolution?: More Counterfactual Speculations" is an exception and I could probably think of a few more if I took the time to do so). Over the last decade or so, most of the work in this area continues to embrace a direct connection between the great evangelical Awakening and the Revolution.
I will stop there for now, but I hope to follow up this post with a "part two" that will be more specific on the way the evangelical paradigm has influenced this period. (I will try to name titles). Then, if I find the time, I would like to add a third post on some alternative (and new?) ways of thinking about this period after spending a fruitful spring and early summer in the archives.
Paul's last post on Clifton's book and John Turner's comment about Jon Butler and the "evangelical synthesis" really struck a chord with me since I have been thinking about this historiographical trend for the past several months in light of some of my current work in early America. I had planned to write a series of posts on this in the next few weeks, but I think the time is right to jump in at this juncture.
Back in 1994 Butler gave a paper at the OAH entitled "Born Again History?" (I do not think he ever published the piece--at least not in this form or by this title). In his own provocative way Butler argued that the so-called evangelical sythesis has not only come to be the dominant paradigm for understanding American religious history, but has become the dominant paradigm for understanding much of American history as a whole. He notes how evangelicalism is used by historians to explain the coming of the American Revolution, post-war republicanism, antebellum social reform, the family, abolitionism, 19th century women's culture, foreign policy, race and the South, populism, progressivism, the post-Watergate presidency, conservatism, and the list goes on. (All one has to do is read the archives of this blog to see that this is still a predominant approach to understanding the American past). Butler, as many of our readers know, is highly critical of this approach and has offered what I think is a sometimes helpful corrective to the evangelical synthesis.
In the time frame that I know best--the period between the First Great Awakening (roughly 1740) and the American Revolution (roughly 1789)--this evangelical synthesis dominates the field. Butler argued strongly against the connection between the Great Awakening and the Revolution in Awash in a Sea of Faith and elsewhere, but it almost seems as if historians (and I am talking off the top of my head, correct me if I am wrong) have completely ignored him. (John Murrin's 1983 classic "No Awakening, No Revolution?: More Counterfactual Speculations" is an exception and I could probably think of a few more if I took the time to do so). Over the last decade or so, most of the work in this area continues to embrace a direct connection between the great evangelical Awakening and the Revolution.
I will stop there for now, but I hope to follow up this post with a "part two" that will be more specific on the way the evangelical paradigm has influenced this period. (I will try to name titles). Then, if I find the time, I would like to add a third post on some alternative (and new?) ways of thinking about this period after spending a fruitful spring and early summer in the archives.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
New Blog: American Creation
John Fea
Our readers should be aware of the folks over at American Creation, a new group blog "to promote discussion, debate and insight into the religious aspects of America's founding." They have an eclectic group of contributors who do a great job of scouring the web for materials related to Christianity and the Founding. It looks like part of their mission is to debunk the "Christian America" myth circulating among certain sectors of American evangelicalism. One of their contributors, Jon Rowe, is the most dogged critic of the Christian America thesis I have ever run across and I have learned much from reading his own blog over the last few years.
As some of you know, I am writing a popular book for the church tentatively titled "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Primer for Christians," so needless to say I will be checking American Creation often.
Our readers should be aware of the folks over at American Creation, a new group blog "to promote discussion, debate and insight into the religious aspects of America's founding." They have an eclectic group of contributors who do a great job of scouring the web for materials related to Christianity and the Founding. It looks like part of their mission is to debunk the "Christian America" myth circulating among certain sectors of American evangelicalism. One of their contributors, Jon Rowe, is the most dogged critic of the Christian America thesis I have ever run across and I have learned much from reading his own blog over the last few years.
As some of you know, I am writing a popular book for the church tentatively titled "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Primer for Christians," so needless to say I will be checking American Creation often.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Deist Monsters and Divine Hierarchies
Paul Harvey
The latest Journal of American History features a terrifically interesting piece by Christopher Grasso of William and Mary: "Deist Monster: On Religious Common Sense in the Wake of the American Revolution (subscription required for link). Besides following a murder mystery in the Early Republic, Grasso concludes with an exploration of what a philosophical reliance on "common sense" meant in the constitutional era, and how it tied into ideas of Deism. His conclusion:
Beadle [a Connecticut merchant who in 1782 murdered his family and then killed himself, and who was thought to have done so after embracing "Deistical beliefs"] had raised troubling questions that could not be easily brushed aside, shouted down, or answered simply with a "thus saith the Lord." Without the guidance of the scriptures, did deism collapse the relation between God and man into fatalism—turning a moral agent into merely God's machine? That may have been true for Beadle, but the same was being said of Calvinism. Did deism instead encourage man to overemphasize his free will, divinize the self, and supplant God? Even those who derided Ethan Allen's arrogance did not misread him to such an extent. Without the Bible, was sanity itself threatened? Yet Beadle had seemed to his neighbors a reasonable and virtuous man until that final morning. What, then, was the relation between religious belief and public virtue?
The deist provocations of Ethan Allen and William Beadle expose the cultural politics involved in the making of American religious common sense. Public champions of Christianity realized that given the social, cultural, and economic disruptions the Revolutionary War had caused, and in the new political environment the Revolution had created, making the United States a Christian nation would require more than the simple perpetuation of a religious heritage. To maintain Christianity as the foundation of a nation that had rejected traditional authority by appealing to self-evident truths, many American Protestants felt compelled to defend scripture by invoking common sense, insisting that the Bible's divine origin was obvious to any sensible person. Most invocations of common sense by antideist writers in the 1780s were not yet intentional references toward the logical edifice of Scottish philosophy; they were rhetorical attempts to claim that the divine inspiration of the scriptures was a fact that could not be contested by reasonable American citizens. Mentioning common sense, though, could be a double-edged sword. The philosophy that readers might associate with that term (whatever the writer's intentions) grounded ethical reasoning on universal moral instinct or on the epistemologically trustworthy faculties of normal human perception; it could therefore be seen as threatening to scriptural authority. Common Sense philosophy had been embraced by some political thinkers, especially those who had been influenced by John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey. But before the last years of the eighteenth century, most orthodox Christians and evangelicals avoided resting too much weight on this mode of thinking because doing so seemed to flatter sinful human nature and to render God's revelation in the scriptures unnecessary. In short, Common Sense philosophy could seem more deist than Christian. So while defending Christianity against deism in a new political climate pushed apologists toward the rhetoric of common sense, for theological reasons many in the 1780s were still wary of the philosophy being attached to that term.
In for a rhetorical penny, however, the defenders of a Christian America were soon in for a philosophical pound. America's Protestant theologians and educators would draw from Scottish thought and learn to finesse the problem, showing, to their satisfaction at least, how Common Sense philosophy and the Bible were mutually reinforcing. The subsequent dominance of Common Sense philosophy in American intellectual history from the 1790s to the Civil War grew out of the broader cultural strains and conflicts laid bare in the 1780s. The deist monster helped bring to the surface fundamental concerns that this christianized common sense would eventually (if temporarily) answer—concerns about the moral nature of the new American citizen and about how the newly united states could secure religious liberty and yet create a society still beholden not just to Nature's God but to the God of the Old and New Testaments.
The same issue has my review of Sean McCloud, Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies, a new work that we've discussed on the blog before.
Finally, J. M. Floyd Thomas of Texas Christian University reviews Ed Blum's W. E. B. DuBois: American Prophet. In this appropriately admiring review, he concludes:
As the first significant examination of Du Bois's religious thought, Blum's work powerfully evokes both the spirit and substance of Du Bois's moral vision in ways that will greatly benefit students and scholars of American religious and intellectual history for years to come.
The latest Journal of American History features a terrifically interesting piece by Christopher Grasso of William and Mary: "Deist Monster: On Religious Common Sense in the Wake of the American Revolution (subscription required for link). Besides following a murder mystery in the Early Republic, Grasso concludes with an exploration of what a philosophical reliance on "common sense" meant in the constitutional era, and how it tied into ideas of Deism. His conclusion:
Beadle [a Connecticut merchant who in 1782 murdered his family and then killed himself, and who was thought to have done so after embracing "Deistical beliefs"] had raised troubling questions that could not be easily brushed aside, shouted down, or answered simply with a "thus saith the Lord." Without the guidance of the scriptures, did deism collapse the relation between God and man into fatalism—turning a moral agent into merely God's machine? That may have been true for Beadle, but the same was being said of Calvinism. Did deism instead encourage man to overemphasize his free will, divinize the self, and supplant God? Even those who derided Ethan Allen's arrogance did not misread him to such an extent. Without the Bible, was sanity itself threatened? Yet Beadle had seemed to his neighbors a reasonable and virtuous man until that final morning. What, then, was the relation between religious belief and public virtue?
The deist provocations of Ethan Allen and William Beadle expose the cultural politics involved in the making of American religious common sense. Public champions of Christianity realized that given the social, cultural, and economic disruptions the Revolutionary War had caused, and in the new political environment the Revolution had created, making the United States a Christian nation would require more than the simple perpetuation of a religious heritage. To maintain Christianity as the foundation of a nation that had rejected traditional authority by appealing to self-evident truths, many American Protestants felt compelled to defend scripture by invoking common sense, insisting that the Bible's divine origin was obvious to any sensible person. Most invocations of common sense by antideist writers in the 1780s were not yet intentional references toward the logical edifice of Scottish philosophy; they were rhetorical attempts to claim that the divine inspiration of the scriptures was a fact that could not be contested by reasonable American citizens. Mentioning common sense, though, could be a double-edged sword. The philosophy that readers might associate with that term (whatever the writer's intentions) grounded ethical reasoning on universal moral instinct or on the epistemologically trustworthy faculties of normal human perception; it could therefore be seen as threatening to scriptural authority. Common Sense philosophy had been embraced by some political thinkers, especially those who had been influenced by John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey. But before the last years of the eighteenth century, most orthodox Christians and evangelicals avoided resting too much weight on this mode of thinking because doing so seemed to flatter sinful human nature and to render God's revelation in the scriptures unnecessary. In short, Common Sense philosophy could seem more deist than Christian. So while defending Christianity against deism in a new political climate pushed apologists toward the rhetoric of common sense, for theological reasons many in the 1780s were still wary of the philosophy being attached to that term.
In for a rhetorical penny, however, the defenders of a Christian America were soon in for a philosophical pound. America's Protestant theologians and educators would draw from Scottish thought and learn to finesse the problem, showing, to their satisfaction at least, how Common Sense philosophy and the Bible were mutually reinforcing. The subsequent dominance of Common Sense philosophy in American intellectual history from the 1790s to the Civil War grew out of the broader cultural strains and conflicts laid bare in the 1780s. The deist monster helped bring to the surface fundamental concerns that this christianized common sense would eventually (if temporarily) answer—concerns about the moral nature of the new American citizen and about how the newly united states could secure religious liberty and yet create a society still beholden not just to Nature's God but to the God of the Old and New Testaments.
The same issue has my review of Sean McCloud, Divine Hierarchies: Class in American Religion and Religious Studies, a new work that we've discussed on the blog before.
Finally, J. M. Floyd Thomas of Texas Christian University reviews Ed Blum's W. E. B. DuBois: American Prophet. In this appropriately admiring review, he concludes:
As the first significant examination of Du Bois's religious thought, Blum's work powerfully evokes both the spirit and substance of Du Bois's moral vision in ways that will greatly benefit students and scholars of American religious and intellectual history for years to come.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Reviving the Great Awakening, Part II
Paul Harvey
Don't miss "Reviving the Great Awakening, Part II," Baldblogger's continuing interviews with Thomas Kidd on his works on the Great Awakening. Here's an excerpt, with links to important follow-up reading material:
BB: One of the points you make early in The Great Awakening is that contemporary accounts of the movement overlook the role of the Holy Spirit in evangelical revivalism. This speaks on the one hand to questions surrounding religious practice (i.e., “manifestations” of the Spirit), while on the other hand it brings a focus to the role of “enchantment” (to use a sociological term) in this history of evangelicalism. You effectively sustain this line of argument throughout the book. What exactly does understanding the role of the Holy Spirit add to our understanding of colonial evangelical revival and religious practice? (Reading between the lines here, are readers right to identify this angle of analysis a silent commentary on your own faith tradition?)
Thomas Kidd: The Great Awakening was shot through with mystical manifestations of the Spirit (trances, dreams, visions, healings, spirit journeys, etc.). Historians have often not known what to make of such episodes, and have only recently begun to look seriously at them as an integral part of evangelical history. Historian Douglas Winiarski has probably done more than anyone to alert us to the teeming presence of the miraculous in early evangelicalism. My sense is that the mysticism of the revivals fed their intensity, subversiveness, and individualistic tendencies. The belief in the Spirit led many common people to believe that they had a more profound experience with God than many of the state-supported, college-educated pastors. I certainly also have personal interest in the ways that experiences in the Spirit tend to fuel a kind of Christian egalitarianism.
UPDATE: Robert Orsi, from a popular Catholicism perspective, addresses this line of thinking and analysis in a 2007 article explaining religious mysteries and human encounters with the transcendent. For further reflections readers might also wish to read Orsi's 2006 interview in Historically Speaking. And of course in this context we should not fail to mention two recent books that help scholars to ponder analysis of the unseen: Orsi's Between Heaven and Earth and Thomas Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling.
Don't miss "Reviving the Great Awakening, Part II," Baldblogger's continuing interviews with Thomas Kidd on his works on the Great Awakening. Here's an excerpt, with links to important follow-up reading material:
BB: One of the points you make early in The Great Awakening is that contemporary accounts of the movement overlook the role of the Holy Spirit in evangelical revivalism. This speaks on the one hand to questions surrounding religious practice (i.e., “manifestations” of the Spirit), while on the other hand it brings a focus to the role of “enchantment” (to use a sociological term) in this history of evangelicalism. You effectively sustain this line of argument throughout the book. What exactly does understanding the role of the Holy Spirit add to our understanding of colonial evangelical revival and religious practice? (Reading between the lines here, are readers right to identify this angle of analysis a silent commentary on your own faith tradition?)
Thomas Kidd: The Great Awakening was shot through with mystical manifestations of the Spirit (trances, dreams, visions, healings, spirit journeys, etc.). Historians have often not known what to make of such episodes, and have only recently begun to look seriously at them as an integral part of evangelical history. Historian Douglas Winiarski has probably done more than anyone to alert us to the teeming presence of the miraculous in early evangelicalism. My sense is that the mysticism of the revivals fed their intensity, subversiveness, and individualistic tendencies. The belief in the Spirit led many common people to believe that they had a more profound experience with God than many of the state-supported, college-educated pastors. I certainly also have personal interest in the ways that experiences in the Spirit tend to fuel a kind of Christian egalitarianism.
UPDATE: Robert Orsi, from a popular Catholicism perspective, addresses this line of thinking and analysis in a 2007 article explaining religious mysteries and human encounters with the transcendent. For further reflections readers might also wish to read Orsi's 2006 interview in Historically Speaking. And of course in this context we should not fail to mention two recent books that help scholars to ponder analysis of the unseen: Orsi's Between Heaven and Earth and Thomas Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
American Religious History and Historians at Baldblogger
Paul Harvey
Some months ago, Baldblogger featured a several-part series of interviews and posts on Ed Blum and W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet, and more recently reports on Blum's recent lecture at the University of Houston, "The Noose and the Cross: Race, Religion, and the Redemption of Violence in the Works of W. E. B. Du Bois."
Last week, Baldblogger began the first of a three-part interview series with Thomas Kidd, author and editor of recent important works on the Great Awakening. These new books, and the interview, highlight the importance of Kidd's work, and should be must-reads for American religious historians. We'll look forward to the continuation of this series.
Thanks to Baldblogger for his vital contributions to blogging in American religious history!
Some months ago, Baldblogger featured a several-part series of interviews and posts on Ed Blum and W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet, and more recently reports on Blum's recent lecture at the University of Houston, "The Noose and the Cross: Race, Religion, and the Redemption of Violence in the Works of W. E. B. Du Bois."
Last week, Baldblogger began the first of a three-part interview series with Thomas Kidd, author and editor of recent important works on the Great Awakening. These new books, and the interview, highlight the importance of Kidd's work, and should be must-reads for American religious historians. We'll look forward to the continuation of this series.
Thanks to Baldblogger for his vital contributions to blogging in American religious history!
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Religion and Constitutional Thought Summer Seminar
BY JOHN FEA
This call for participants just came across the H-OIEAHC (early American history listserv). It looks like a great opportunity for graduate students and pre-tenured faculty.
The Institute for Constitutional Studies is pleased to announce its ninth annual residential summer research seminar, to be held June 8-14, 2008, in Washington, D.C. This year's topic is "The Influence of Religion on Constitutional Thought." Judge Michael McConnell (Tenth Circuit United States Court of Appeals) and Professor Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame) will teach the seminar. The application deadline has been extended to May 5.
Description: Religious thinking has influenced many of the most fundamental features of American constitutional thought. This seminar will explore some of those developments, with focused discussion of selected readings in the morning sessions and paper presentations in the afternoon. Among the topics that may be considered are: (1) Puritan and Reformed Protestant contributions to constitutionalism, republicanism, and revolution; (2) the colonial Great Awakening (Jonathan Edwards) and ideals of society; (3) William Penn and Quaker ideas of political order; (4) Anglicanism, constitutional monarchy, and Loyalist protest; (5) Presbyterian ecclesiology (e.g., John Witherspoon) and ideas of federalism and representation; (6) Baptist theology (including the rejection of infant baptism, e.g., Isaac Backus) and rising individualism and rejection of religious establishment; (7) Masonic ideas (and opposition to them) in the formation of early republican ideology; (8) varying religious appropriations of the Enlightenment; (9) the Second Great Awakening and the rise of voluntarism and civil society; (10) the religious roots of abolitionism and proslavery thought; (11) Lincoln’s theology; (12) women as leaders in church and state; and (13) the 19th-century Roman Catholic critique (e.g., Orestes Brownson) of liberalism.
Participants are not limited to these topics, but may prepare and present papers ranging across the modern history of constitutional democracy, based on any significant connection between religious and constitutional thought, broadly construed. For more information please visit our website.
This call for participants just came across the H-OIEAHC (early American history listserv). It looks like a great opportunity for graduate students and pre-tenured faculty.
The Institute for Constitutional Studies is pleased to announce its ninth annual residential summer research seminar, to be held June 8-14, 2008, in Washington, D.C. This year's topic is "The Influence of Religion on Constitutional Thought." Judge Michael McConnell (Tenth Circuit United States Court of Appeals) and Professor Mark Noll (University of Notre Dame) will teach the seminar. The application deadline has been extended to May 5.
Description: Religious thinking has influenced many of the most fundamental features of American constitutional thought. This seminar will explore some of those developments, with focused discussion of selected readings in the morning sessions and paper presentations in the afternoon. Among the topics that may be considered are: (1) Puritan and Reformed Protestant contributions to constitutionalism, republicanism, and revolution; (2) the colonial Great Awakening (Jonathan Edwards) and ideals of society; (3) William Penn and Quaker ideas of political order; (4) Anglicanism, constitutional monarchy, and Loyalist protest; (5) Presbyterian ecclesiology (e.g., John Witherspoon) and ideas of federalism and representation; (6) Baptist theology (including the rejection of infant baptism, e.g., Isaac Backus) and rising individualism and rejection of religious establishment; (7) Masonic ideas (and opposition to them) in the formation of early republican ideology; (8) varying religious appropriations of the Enlightenment; (9) the Second Great Awakening and the rise of voluntarism and civil society; (10) the religious roots of abolitionism and proslavery thought; (11) Lincoln’s theology; (12) women as leaders in church and state; and (13) the 19th-century Roman Catholic critique (e.g., Orestes Brownson) of liberalism.
Participants are not limited to these topics, but may prepare and present papers ranging across the modern history of constitutional democracy, based on any significant connection between religious and constitutional thought, broadly construed. For more information please visit our website.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Labors of Liberality
Paul Harvey
While we're on the subject of the Enlightenment and religion in eighteenth-century America (see the post just below, on John Fea's new book), here's some more good reading. The most recent Journal of American History features this article by J. M. Opal: "The Labors of Liberality: Christian Benevolence and National Prejudice in the American Founding" (History Cooperative access required). Here's a little appetizer:
Historians have also employed "liberalism" to make sense of early national Americans and their collective
pursuit of happiness. "Liberal" in this vein connotes the rejection of aristocratic privilege and the embrace of progress, natural rights, and the good sense of the unsupervised people. Since the 1980s, there has been a tendency to fit liberal and republican values within broader traditions of early American thought and culture. James T. Kloppenberg, in particular, has called attention to another liberal tradition—familiar to Locke himself—that saddled the autonomous self with a range of duties derived from Christian morality. Perhaps, several scholars have suggested, the foundations of American politics have as much to do with Martin Luther and John Calvin as with Niccolò Machiavelli and James Harrington. Most recently, Philip Hamburger has demonstrated that while liberalism may qualify as the unwanted child of republicanism, throughout the eighteenth century, liberality signified "an elevated moral position." Far from an excuse for interest bartering or greed, liberality meant generosity and tolerance, the ability to approach problems with an open and candid mind.
This essay seeks to build on such insights by showing how the liberal "sensibility," as contemporaries knew it, contributed to both the political and ethical process of nation making during the 1780s. Liberality drew the religious, social, and economic aspirations of the Enlightenment into a devastating critique of "local prejudice," and for a brief period it dominated the public discourses and moral prescriptions of the newly United States. Despite their practical motivations and supposed disillusionment, the Federalists were the chief beneficiaries of this liberal ascendancy. Ministers and moralists such as Rev. Enos Hitchcock read liberality and "universal benevolence" into the origins and spirit of the Constitution, investing the federal design with the spotless values of unity and tolerance. But the victory they helped achieve during 1788–1789, combined with events in Europe and the Caribbean region during the next few years, gave rise to the most enduring prejudice of all: the belief that America was uniquely favored by God and that patriotism and other "religions of the heart" defined and delimited virtue. In short, a close study of liberality deepens our understanding of how and what the Federalists won and of the interplay between religion, politics, and nationalism in the founding period.
And here's the conclusion, one that allows us to comprehend both the "liberality" of the founding and the American triumphalism (and parochialism) which soon followed, one far away from the notions of liberality traced in this article:
The liberal values that Hitchcock faithfully upheld had played a vital role in the interval between the end of the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the Constitution, often called the "critical period" of American politics, both in unifying Federalist interests and deflecting Antifederalist attacks. Traces of liberality lived on in a general ethos of democratic give-and-take in the new republic, as well as in a host of "benevolent" organizations. But the ascendant dynamic of nineteenth-century democracy was the free play of illiberality within the rigid and mutually reinforcing boundaries of family, faith, and nation. Ironically, "liberals" across the Atlantic world became nationalists, champions of self-determination for discrete peoples who claimed a special, if not a sacred, identity. Even more ironically, the celebrated centerpiece of American political society became the Constitution itself, along with a civil religion that presumed God's exclusive blessing. That faith continues to authorize an aggressive parochialism in the United States, an illiberal belief in the superiority—and universality—of American liberalism.
While we're on the subject of the Enlightenment and religion in eighteenth-century America (see the post just below, on John Fea's new book), here's some more good reading. The most recent Journal of American History features this article by J. M. Opal: "The Labors of Liberality: Christian Benevolence and National Prejudice in the American Founding" (History Cooperative access required). Here's a little appetizer:
Historians have also employed "liberalism" to make sense of early national Americans and their collective
pursuit of happiness. "Liberal" in this vein connotes the rejection of aristocratic privilege and the embrace of progress, natural rights, and the good sense of the unsupervised people. Since the 1980s, there has been a tendency to fit liberal and republican values within broader traditions of early American thought and culture. James T. Kloppenberg, in particular, has called attention to another liberal tradition—familiar to Locke himself—that saddled the autonomous self with a range of duties derived from Christian morality. Perhaps, several scholars have suggested, the foundations of American politics have as much to do with Martin Luther and John Calvin as with Niccolò Machiavelli and James Harrington. Most recently, Philip Hamburger has demonstrated that while liberalism may qualify as the unwanted child of republicanism, throughout the eighteenth century, liberality signified "an elevated moral position." Far from an excuse for interest bartering or greed, liberality meant generosity and tolerance, the ability to approach problems with an open and candid mind.This essay seeks to build on such insights by showing how the liberal "sensibility," as contemporaries knew it, contributed to both the political and ethical process of nation making during the 1780s. Liberality drew the religious, social, and economic aspirations of the Enlightenment into a devastating critique of "local prejudice," and for a brief period it dominated the public discourses and moral prescriptions of the newly United States. Despite their practical motivations and supposed disillusionment, the Federalists were the chief beneficiaries of this liberal ascendancy. Ministers and moralists such as Rev. Enos Hitchcock read liberality and "universal benevolence" into the origins and spirit of the Constitution, investing the federal design with the spotless values of unity and tolerance. But the victory they helped achieve during 1788–1789, combined with events in Europe and the Caribbean region during the next few years, gave rise to the most enduring prejudice of all: the belief that America was uniquely favored by God and that patriotism and other "religions of the heart" defined and delimited virtue. In short, a close study of liberality deepens our understanding of how and what the Federalists won and of the interplay between religion, politics, and nationalism in the founding period.
And here's the conclusion, one that allows us to comprehend both the "liberality" of the founding and the American triumphalism (and parochialism) which soon followed, one far away from the notions of liberality traced in this article:
The liberal values that Hitchcock faithfully upheld had played a vital role in the interval between the end of the Revolutionary War and the ratification of the Constitution, often called the "critical period" of American politics, both in unifying Federalist interests and deflecting Antifederalist attacks. Traces of liberality lived on in a general ethos of democratic give-and-take in the new republic, as well as in a host of "benevolent" organizations. But the ascendant dynamic of nineteenth-century democracy was the free play of illiberality within the rigid and mutually reinforcing boundaries of family, faith, and nation. Ironically, "liberals" across the Atlantic world became nationalists, champions of self-determination for discrete peoples who claimed a special, if not a sacred, identity. Even more ironically, the celebrated centerpiece of American political society became the Constitution itself, along with a civil religion that presumed God's exclusive blessing. That faith continues to authorize an aggressive parochialism in the United States, an illiberal belief in the superiority—and universality—of American liberalism.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
John Fea's Way of Improvement
by Paul Harvey
Our contributing editors are publishing machines! The latest announcement: the release of John Fea, The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America, University of Pennsylvania Press.
From the web page for the book:
The Way of Improvement Leads Home traces the short but fascinating life of Philip Vickers Fithian, one of the most prolific diarists in early America. Born to Presbyterian grain-growers in rural New Jersey, he was never quite satisfied with the agricultural life he seemed destined to inherit. Fithian longed for something more—to improve himself in a revolutionary world that was making upward mobility possible. While Fithian is best known for the diary that he wrote in 1773-74 while working as a tutor at Nomini Hall, the Virginia plantation of Robert Carter, this first full biography moves beyond his experience in the Old Dominion to examine his inner life, his experience in the early American backcountry, his love affair with Elizabeth Beatty, and his role as a Revolutionary War chaplain.
From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters—a transatlantic intellectual community sustained through sociability, print, and the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters was above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. Although Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he constantly struggled to reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. As John Fea argues, it was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections and enabled him to live a life worthy of a man of letters.
"Many historians of Revolutionary America have plundered the diaries of Philip Vickers Fithian, but until now no one has satisfactorily told the life story of this great diarist. John Fea's insightful book does just that—and yet more. By showing how Fithian pursued the values of a cosmopolitan Enlightenment, in concert with the values of Presbyterian Christianity and American patriotism, his study reveals much about an enduring American tradition."—Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame
"John Fea has given readers . . . a gift in this delightful biography of diarist Philip Fithian. . . . Fea has captured a multifaceted world that teachers of American history should rush to share with their students."—Dallett Hemphill, author of Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America
John Fea teaches history at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania.
From the villages of New Jersey, Fithian was able to participate indirectly in the eighteenth-century republic of letters—a transatlantic intellectual community sustained through sociability, print, and the pursuit of mutual improvement. The republic of letters was above all else a rational republic, with little tolerance for those unable to rid themselves of parochial passions. Participation required a commitment to self-improvement that demanded a belief in the Enlightenment values of human potential and social progress. Although Fithian was deeply committed to these values, he constantly struggled to reconcile his quest for a cosmopolitan life with his love of home. As John Fea argues, it was the people, the religious culture, and the very landscape of his "native sod" that continued to hold Fithian's affections and enabled him to live a life worthy of a man of letters."Many historians of Revolutionary America have plundered the diaries of Philip Vickers Fithian, but until now no one has satisfactorily told the life story of this great diarist. John Fea's insightful book does just that—and yet more. By showing how Fithian pursued the values of a cosmopolitan Enlightenment, in concert with the values of Presbyterian Christianity and American patriotism, his study reveals much about an enduring American tradition."—Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame
"John Fea has given readers . . . a gift in this delightful biography of diarist Philip Fithian. . . . Fea has captured a multifaceted world that teachers of American history should rush to share with their students."—Dallett Hemphill, author of Bowing to Necessities: A History of Manners in America
John Fea teaches history at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Liberating the Founders
PAUL HARVEY
This week's Speaking of Faith features Krista Tippett's interview with Steven Waldman, who discusses at length Founding Faith.
From the Speaking of Faith newsletter, with more on the program:
Liberating the Founders
We liberate the founders from conservative and liberal captivity, by revisiting the real, messy history of religious history in early America with journalist Steven Waldman. We explore how this history might shake and reshape Americans' sense of what is at stake in current debates about the relationship between government and religion. Also, how a falsely harmonious sense of the American experience with religious liberty undermines the wisdom American history holds for developing democracies around the world.
Disspelling the Myth of Uninterrupted Triumph and Goodness
. . . Waldman reminds us that the genius of the U.S. founders was not in getting everything right from the outset, but in learning from their mistakes, with an eye out for the missteps of their own time. The first 150 years of colonial history, as he retraces it, involved a cascade of failed experiments with official state religions. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both became champions of the separation of religion and state — albeit with very different emphases — in part through their revulsion at the intolerance and violence that marked these experiments. . . .
[Waldman] dwells with some insistence — for our collective edification — on the dark side of this early history. . . . The facts, as he tells them, are shocking. At the same time, he finds a way to forgive our confusion, and our gloss on history. We come by them honestly — as a direct inheritance from the founders themselves, who were equally confused, and imprecise, and muddied by the politics of their moment in time.
. . . . A self-righteous sense of U.S. history as an unbroken arc of triumph and goodness does not serve us well as citizens and leaders in the 21st-century world. More positively stated: an active, self-aware memory of the difficulty and struggle, the violence and mistakes, that accompanied the birth of American democracy — and that only gradually and fitfully led to the virtue we now prize of separation of church and state — could be a great gift and resource in helping young democracies around the world. Our own history seen in the light of fact, and removed from the distorting divides of our time, could be a source of our greatest wisdom and reason precisely towards what is difficult and dangerous in the contemporary world.
This week's Speaking of Faith features Krista Tippett's interview with Steven Waldman, who discusses at length Founding Faith.
From the Speaking of Faith newsletter, with more on the program:
Liberating the Founders
We liberate the founders from conservative and liberal captivity, by revisiting the real, messy history of religious history in early America with journalist Steven Waldman. We explore how this history might shake and reshape Americans' sense of what is at stake in current debates about the relationship between government and religion. Also, how a falsely harmonious sense of the American experience with religious liberty undermines the wisdom American history holds for developing democracies around the world.
Disspelling the Myth of Uninterrupted Triumph and Goodness
. . . Waldman reminds us that the genius of the U.S. founders was not in getting everything right from the outset, but in learning from their mistakes, with an eye out for the missteps of their own time. The first 150 years of colonial history, as he retraces it, involved a cascade of failed experiments with official state religions. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both became champions of the separation of religion and state — albeit with very different emphases — in part through their revulsion at the intolerance and violence that marked these experiments. . . .
[Waldman] dwells with some insistence — for our collective edification — on the dark side of this early history. . . . The facts, as he tells them, are shocking. At the same time, he finds a way to forgive our confusion, and our gloss on history. We come by them honestly — as a direct inheritance from the founders themselves, who were equally confused, and imprecise, and muddied by the politics of their moment in time.
. . . . A self-righteous sense of U.S. history as an unbroken arc of triumph and goodness does not serve us well as citizens and leaders in the 21st-century world. More positively stated: an active, self-aware memory of the difficulty and struggle, the violence and mistakes, that accompanied the birth of American democracy — and that only gradually and fitfully led to the virtue we now prize of separation of church and state — could be a great gift and resource in helping young democracies around the world. Our own history seen in the light of fact, and removed from the distorting divides of our time, could be a source of our greatest wisdom and reason precisely towards what is difficult and dangerous in the contemporary world.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
More on Steven Waldman, Founding Faith
PAUL HARVEY
John Fea gave our blog an extensive and thoughtful review of STeven Waldman's Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America here (or just scroll down).
Terry Gross's interview on Fresh Air with Waldman is linked here. An introductory blurb:
Fresh Air from WHYY, March 11, 2008 · Was America meant to be a Christian nation? Author Steven Waldman attempts to answer this and other questions related to America's religious history in his new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.
Waldman is the co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a website devoted to spirituality and faith issues. In tandem with his book, Beliefnet has opened an online archive of historical documents related to the separation of church and state, and religious freedom in America.
There's also a short excerpt from the volume linked to the Fresh Air site.
John Fea gave our blog an extensive and thoughtful review of STeven Waldman's Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America here (or just scroll down).
Terry Gross's interview on Fresh Air with Waldman is linked here. An introductory blurb:
Fresh Air from WHYY, March 11, 2008 · Was America meant to be a Christian nation? Author Steven Waldman attempts to answer this and other questions related to America's religious history in his new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.
Waldman is the co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a website devoted to spirituality and faith issues. In tandem with his book, Beliefnet has opened an online archive of historical documents related to the separation of church and state, and religious freedom in America.
There's also a short excerpt from the volume linked to the Fresh Air site.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Review: Steven Waldman's "Founding Faith"
BY JOHN FEA
Just when I thought that there was nothing left to say about religion and the founding of the United States, Steven Waldman has come along with Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America. I realize that some readers of this blog might whine and moan about another book on this subject, but if we have to deal with a new biography of Abraham Lincoln every year, then what’s wrong with another book about faith and the founding, especially when it is framed as carefully as this one.
Waldman, the co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.Com, has written a useful book. Founding Faith is not a work of original scholarship, but Waldman relies upon the very best studies in the field to craft his compelling narrative. His research in primary sources—mostly the writings of the Founding Fathers—is also impressive. The defenders of Christian America will have a hard time arguing with him or accusing him of being too reliant on secondary material.
Founding Faith is unlike any other popular trade book on religion and the founding era. It is actually quite balanced. (In terms of thesis and style, Jon Meacham’s American Gospel is its closest competitor. Meacham organizes his book around the idea of civil religion. Waldman’s focus is on religious freedom). The book presents a clear argument against the Christian America view, but Waldman has no axe to grind. In other words, his study is quite different from books with titles such as Moral Minority, The Godless Constitution, Liars for Jesus, and American Fascists. Neither is it as polemical as Randall Balmer’s Thy Kingdom Come. Founding Faith comes with ringing endorsements from Joseph Ellis, Mark Noll, Bill Bennett, Jim Wallis, Walter Isaacson, and George Stephanopoulos. This is certainly a diverse bunch!
Waldman sets the record straight on several issues that have been debated fiercely by those engaged in what he calls the “custody battle” over the American founding. Seventeenth-century America, he rightly argues, was not founded as a bastion of religious freedom, but as a place where religious establishments prevailed. Scholars will already know this, but it is still nice to see such a clean and direct hit on the Whiggish interpretations of the British colonies promoted by many of the so-called Christian America writers. Waldman also makes it clear that most of the Founders were not deists, especially if we define a “deist” as a person who rejects the idea that God acts in human history. Nearly all the Founders believed in providence. I am sure that Susan Jacoby and others and still others may have something to say about this, but Waldman is correct here.
It is now common for those on the right and the left to try to prove that America is or isn’t a Christian nation based on the religious beliefs of the Founders. Waldman reminds us of the logical problems with this argument. Just because one of the Founders was a Christian—or even an evangelical Christian—doesn’t mean that he was an opponent of the separation of church and state. The opposite is also true. Just because one of the Founders did not believe all the tenets of orthodox Christianity does not always mean that he rejected the idea that Christianity was good for the republic. This argument seems obvious, but it is often missing from the popular religious histories of the founding era.
Waldman offers some interesting historical nuggets that are definitely worth pondering. For example, was Thomas Jefferson an early proponent of “intelligent design?” Waldman thinks so. Do the conservatives have the best argument in the debate over whether or not the natural rights described in the Declaration of Independence can be traced to historic Christianity? Waldman believes they do. Did James Madison’s pessimistic view of human nature, as seen in Federalist #10 and elsewhere, stem from his Calvinist training as a student of John Witherspoon at Princeton? Perhaps, says Waldman.
The heroes in this book are Madison and the Baptists. Waldman advocates strongly for the application of Madison’s views on the separation of church and state to our contemporary religious debates. Unlike founders such as Washington, Adams, or even Franklin, Madison believed that religion and government should never mix. He proposed a wall between separation of church and state (though he did not use the term “wall”) well before the passing of the First Amendment, the writing of Thomas Jefferson’s 1809 letter to the Danbury Baptists, and the twentieth-century affirmations of the Supreme Court on the subject. For Madison, when government stays out of religion, religion thrives. Waldman agrees.
Baptists helped Madison shape his views on church and state. The persecution of these evangelicals in Virginia prompted him to write his now famous Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments (1785). Baptists also lobbied heavily (against the Episcopalian evangelical Patrick Henry, who favored a form of establishment) for Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, (1786). They were also a major force behind Jefferson’s election to the presidency in 1800. (The practice of courting the evangelical vote has a long history!). For Waldman, the irony in all of this is that religious descendants of these eighteenth-century evangelical Baptists are now, in the twenty-first century, leading the charge to challenge this view of the separation of church and state.
There is not a whole lot to quibble with in Founding Faith. Waldman does embrace the argument that the Great Awakening—with its rebellion against clerical authority and democratic ideals—set the American Revolution in motion. As many of our readers already know, some historians have questioned whether there is any relationship between the Awakening and the Revolution (myself included). Moreover, those who favor a greater place for religion in the public square will have problems with Waldman’s conclusion that Madison is the best model for dealing with our present-day controversies over the relationship between church and state.
Finally, I wonder if this book will get into the right hands. Some on the Christian Right will read it, and may even appreciate it, but few will be converted to Waldman's view of American history. If he is correct these defenders of Christian America will need to close shop. And don’t expect that to happen anytime soon. Founding Faith will make the members of the ACLU and other supporters of complete separation a bit uncomfortable because Waldman is not afraid to say that some of the Christian Right’s historical analysis may be correct. But in the end, liberals will breathe a sigh of relief after reading his strong defense of Madison.
If there was ever a book that might convince some readers—on both the left and the right-- to rethink or tweak their views on religion and the founding, Founding Faith may be it. This is now the best popular book on the subject. It will make a big and well-deserved splash when it is released next week.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Providence and the Invention of the United States
BY JOHN FEA
Last June thousands of conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists gathered together in Virginia for an event called the Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of America’s Providential History, 1607-2007, sponsored by an organization called Vision Forum Ministries. The eight day celebration included “Faith and Freedom Tours” of Williamsburg and Jamestown, seminars on America’s providential history, worship services, children’s programs, and a host of other patriotic commemorations. It was a showcase of the 400th anniversary of the first English colony in America--Christian Right style.
I am assuming that most of the readers of this blog would agree that this event is disturbing on so many levels. I have blogged on topics like this before and will probably blog on topics like this again. But one cannot deny that the folks at Vision Forum Ministries, in their promotion of the providence of God in history, have tapped into a longstanding tradition in American politics and intellectual life. This is the theme of Nicholas Guyatt’s great new book, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1865 (Cambridge UP, 2007).
In historicizing the notion of providence, Guyatt shows that this idea “played a leading role in the invention of an American national identity before 1865." The depth of his research and the breadth of his scope are quite impressive. He packs this book with so much information that at times it became a burden to work through it all. But Guyatt writes well, and as a result this will be the standard text on the topic for many years to come. Even if you never get around to reading all 300+ pages it is a book worth having on your shelf as a reference tool for when one of David Barton's young and eager disciples takes that front row seat in your lecture hall.
For Guyatt, providentialism is more than just a “belief that God intervenes in human history.” It is a rather complex system of theological ideas that have manifested themselves in a variety of different ways in our nation's past. Throughout American history providence has been promoted in terms of the covenantal belief that nations rise and fall based upon their obedience to God, the idea that some nations—like the United States-- are chosen to play a special role in human history, and the practice of interpreting current events through the grid of biblical prophecy. Throughout the period between Jamestown and the Civil War, providence was used over and over again as a tool to achieve political ends. Guyatt explores the role that providence played in European colonization, the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the British response to the American Revolution, early national historiography, anti-slavery movements, pro-slavery ideology, Indian removal, the rise of nationalism in the early republic, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction.
Guyatt does not have an axe to grind. As tempting as it might be to draw contemporary lessons from the history of providentialism in early America, he remains a true historian, leaving it up to us to tease out the implications of his work. Yet the implications are there, and they are easily discovered. One cannot read this book without seeing the serious problems that providentialism has caused in America. With this in mind, the argument of Guyatt’s entire study is probably best summed by a quote he uses from Ambrose Bierce’s 1911 satire, The Devil’s Dictionary. Bierce defines “providence” as an idea that is “unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.” At least that is how it has usually played out in United States history.
I am assuming that most of the readers of this blog would agree that this event is disturbing on so many levels. I have blogged on topics like this before and will probably blog on topics like this again. But one cannot deny that the folks at Vision Forum Ministries, in their promotion of the providence of God in history, have tapped into a longstanding tradition in American politics and intellectual life. This is the theme of Nicholas Guyatt’s great new book, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607-1865 (Cambridge UP, 2007).
In historicizing the notion of providence, Guyatt shows that this idea “played a leading role in the invention of an American national identity before 1865." The depth of his research and the breadth of his scope are quite impressive. He packs this book with so much information that at times it became a burden to work through it all. But Guyatt writes well, and as a result this will be the standard text on the topic for many years to come. Even if you never get around to reading all 300+ pages it is a book worth having on your shelf as a reference tool for when one of David Barton's young and eager disciples takes that front row seat in your lecture hall.
For Guyatt, providentialism is more than just a “belief that God intervenes in human history.” It is a rather complex system of theological ideas that have manifested themselves in a variety of different ways in our nation's past. Throughout American history providence has been promoted in terms of the covenantal belief that nations rise and fall based upon their obedience to God, the idea that some nations—like the United States-- are chosen to play a special role in human history, and the practice of interpreting current events through the grid of biblical prophecy. Throughout the period between Jamestown and the Civil War, providence was used over and over again as a tool to achieve political ends. Guyatt explores the role that providence played in European colonization, the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the British response to the American Revolution, early national historiography, anti-slavery movements, pro-slavery ideology, Indian removal, the rise of nationalism in the early republic, the American Civil War, and Reconstruction.
Guyatt does not have an axe to grind. As tempting as it might be to draw contemporary lessons from the history of providentialism in early America, he remains a true historian, leaving it up to us to tease out the implications of his work. Yet the implications are there, and they are easily discovered. One cannot read this book without seeing the serious problems that providentialism has caused in America. With this in mind, the argument of Guyatt’s entire study is probably best summed by a quote he uses from Ambrose Bierce’s 1911 satire, The Devil’s Dictionary. Bierce defines “providence” as an idea that is “unexpectedly and conspicuously beneficial to the person so describing it.” At least that is how it has usually played out in United States history.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
National Religious History Week -- Not
PAUL HARVEY
Quite possibly much ado about nothing, likely an election-year stunt to fire up the base rather than some grave evidence of the theocrats on the march. But still -- courtesy of Tenured Radical, here's a discussion of a House Resolution to establish a National Religious History Week -- aka "America is a Christian Nation" week. Here's an excerpt from the resolution:
"Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible" and "Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation's history that the United States is 'a Christian country', 'a Christian nation', 'a Christian people', 'a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being' and that 'we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion....'"
Apparently the bill's sponsors have not talked to John Fea, among others.
Here's the best portion from The Radical's take:
The bill clips a fistful of historical "facts" that link American political institutions to Christianity, including the presence of a Gutenberg Bible in the Library of Congress. These facts are stripped of their historical context, and strung together in chronological order, to "prove" that the United States is, and was intended to be by its founders, a Christian nation . . . Curiously, it also suggests that religion really has no history as such -- only a timeless present that can be used to re-order a political past in the interests of a contemporary interest group, a charge often aimed at leftist academics by cultural conservatives who want to minimize the importance of race and gender to national history.
UPDATE: Another History Blog looks under the hood of the "facts" stated in the resolution, briefly; Chris Rodda does so, more extensively, here. Truthiness reigns in this regiment of the right.
One presumes this will collapse of its own absurdity.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
Native Voices from the Revolutionary Era: New Primary Source Texts
PAUL HARVEYI'm out for the next several days, but wanted to leave you with a couple of recommendations for the New Year, for some primary texts that might otherwise escape your attention.
Here's the first: The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Mohegan: Literature and Leadership in Eighteenth-Century Native America.
Some years ago, a scholar collected and published the indispensable writings of William Apess: On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot, featuring his famous autobiography A Son of the Forest and his blistering appreciation of King Philip. The new collected writings of Occom provide an excellent resource as well. Here's the description from the book jacket:
This volume brings together for the first time the known writings of the pioneering Native American religious and political leader, intellectual, and author, Samson Occom (Mohegan; 1723-1792). The largest surviving archive of American Indian writing before Charles Eastman (Santee Sioux; 1858-1939), Occom's writings offer unparalleled views into a Native American intellectual and cultural universe in the era of colonialization and the early United States. His letters, sermons, journals, prose, petitions, and hymns--many of them never before published--document the emergence of pantribal political consciousness among the Native peoples of New England as well as Native efforts to adapt Christianity as a tool of decolonialization. Presenting previously unpublished and newly recovered writings, this collection more than doubles available Native American writing from before 1800.
Occom's writings have been discussed in a number of places previously, most crucially in Joanna Brooks's American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African American and Native American Literatures. But this compilation allows for ready access to the complete body of works.
A related title from a few years back, of a figure less important then Occom but certainly worth study: To Do Good to My Indian Brethren: The Writings of Joseph Johnson 1751-1776 . From the Library Journal:
Some years ago, a scholar collected and published the indispensable writings of William Apess: On Our Own Ground: The Complete Writings of William Apess, a Pequot, featuring his famous autobiography A Son of the Forest and his blistering appreciation of King Philip. The new collected writings of Occom provide an excellent resource as well. Here's the description from the book jacket:
This volume brings together for the first time the known writings of the pioneering Native American religious and political leader, intellectual, and author, Samson Occom (Mohegan; 1723-1792). The largest surviving archive of American Indian writing before Charles Eastman (Santee Sioux; 1858-1939), Occom's writings offer unparalleled views into a Native American intellectual and cultural universe in the era of colonialization and the early United States. His letters, sermons, journals, prose, petitions, and hymns--many of them never before published--document the emergence of pantribal political consciousness among the Native peoples of New England as well as Native efforts to adapt Christianity as a tool of decolonialization. Presenting previously unpublished and newly recovered writings, this collection more than doubles available Native American writing from before 1800.
Occom's writings have been discussed in a number of places previously, most crucially in Joanna Brooks's American Lazarus: Religion and the Rise of African American and Native American Literatures. But this compilation allows for ready access to the complete body of works.
A related title from a few years back, of a figure less important then Occom but certainly worth study: To Do Good to My Indian Brethren: The Writings of Joseph Johnson 1751-1776 . From the Library Journal:
These transcriptions of diaries, letters, and sermons of Johnson, a Mohegan (Mohican) teacher and visionary leader, break stereotypes. With prominent ancestors and literate parents, Johnson lived in a community that valued both Mohegan and European cultures. His writing style, learned under the tutelage of Eleazer Wheelock, founder of Dartmouth College, is indistinguishable from that of other writers (Indian or white) trained in prerevolutionary missionary schools, but attention to editor/author Murray's interpretation reveals issues and facts about Mohegan life, including plans for "Brotherton," a Christian Indian town, realized only after the Revolution and Johnson's death. Murray (English, Queen's Univ., Kingston, Ontario) emphasizes the individual writer, following such examples as James Axtell's The Invasion Within (1985). Johnson's humility is striking, as is his commitment to his people. This book makes another Indian "voice" more accessible and gives helpful instruction in the genres and forms of early American writing. Recommended for all Native American collections and for academic libraries.Finally, a related but lesser-known secondary text: Bernd Peyer, The Tutor'd Mind: Indian Missionary-Writers in Antebellum America.
I find historians often not aware of the ready availability of texts such as these, which are full of rich material for American religious history scholars. Brooks's work noted above is, for my money, the best introduction and analysis of the subject.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Boston 1775 on Huckabee the "Historian"
By JOHN FEA
Last week I noted J.L. Bell's historical analysis of Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech. This week the prolific blogger at Boston 1775 has tackled the historical problems in Mike Huckabee's political rhetoric, including his outragous assertion that "most" of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were ministers. Ed Rollins, Huckabee's campaign manager and a wily veteran of the down and dirty politics in my home state of New Jersey, is also taken to task.
Last week I noted J.L. Bell's historical analysis of Mitt Romney's "Faith in America" speech. This week the prolific blogger at Boston 1775 has tackled the historical problems in Mike Huckabee's political rhetoric, including his outragous assertion that "most" of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were ministers. Ed Rollins, Huckabee's campaign manager and a wily veteran of the down and dirty politics in my home state of New Jersey, is also taken to task.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
The Irony of Romney's Appeal to the Founders
BY JOHN FEA
OK--this will be my last post on Romney's speech, I promise. But I could not resist calling attention to J.L. Bell's analysis of Romney's use of founding-era history at Boston 1775. Bell not only calls Romney out for some historical errors in his speech (and offers a host of other things to think about related to religion and the Continental Congress), but he also notes several ironies in Romney's mention of Sam Adams as a model of interdenominational prayer. It is worth a quick look.
OK--this will be my last post on Romney's speech, I promise. But I could not resist calling attention to J.L. Bell's analysis of Romney's use of founding-era history at Boston 1775. Bell not only calls Romney out for some historical errors in his speech (and offers a host of other things to think about related to religion and the Continental Congress), but he also notes several ironies in Romney's mention of Sam Adams as a model of interdenominational prayer. It is worth a quick look.
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