Religion and Society in
America
The Democratization of American
Religious Life
Week 5 – Lecture 2
The Democratization of American
Religious Life
 Evangelicals and the Formation of the
“Benevolent Empire”
 Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 Education in America
 Volunteer Societies
 Women and Religious Life
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 1780s and 1790s there is tremendous
potential in the South to overcome
slavery
 Mid- to late-1790s understood as a
period of “backsliding”
 Growth of evangelicalism = rise in
social respectability
 1840s and 1850s cultural dominance
of evangelicalism
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Religious Populism or the
Democratization of American religion
(1790s – 1840s) reflects the passions
of ordinary people and the charisma
of democratic movement-builders
 Remains the oldest and deepest
impulse in American religious life
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Outcomes:
 Religious language rarely divorced from
new democratic vocabularies
 Crumbling notions of traditional religious
authority
 Religious debates follow social and class
lines, rather than merely intellectual
subjects
 Appeal to “Biblical Government” helped to
remove issues of government and authority
from concrete applications
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Outcomes:
 Amalgam of often contradictory impulses
(supernaturalism, rationalism, mystic
experience, biblical literalism, Jeffersonian
rhetoric)
 Egalitarian notions of reading the bible
 Individual versus communal orientation
 Tempered form of anticlericalism
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Evangelicalism primary force in
shaping “empire”
 evangelizomai = to announce
 evangelion = good new
 N.T. references (3 total) suggests one
who is called and empowered by God
to proclaim the good news of Jesus
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Itinerant ministers (e.g. George
Whitefield, Francis Asbury)
 Asbury(1745-1816) - first Methodist
bishop in America
 1790s period of “backsliding”
 New generation of ministers emerge
in early 19th Century
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Peter Cartwright (1785 – 1872)
 Taught by mother
 Conversion experience at a camp
meeting in 1801
 Cartwright ordained to Methodist
church in 1803; master “extempore
style” of preaching
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Evangelicals = persons who experienced
the Holy Spirit in a life-changing way
 “Heartfelt faith” through the study of the
bible, prayer, mutual care, repentance, and
reaffirmation
 The conversion experience and inclusion
into the evangelical community often, but
not exclusively, through the camp meeting
Evangelicals and the Formation of
the “Benevolent Empire”
 Changing rhetoric of “religious
liberty”
 18th Century = civil right to choose or
not choose affiliation with a church
 19th Century = abolition of
organizational restraints and
denominational structures
The Formation of the “Benevolent
Empire”
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Revivals or Camp Meetings
Education in America
Volunteer Societies
Activities of Women
Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 Explosive revivals in western frontier
 Barton Stone (1772-1844) – Presbyterian
minister and “Restoration movement”
minister
 Cane Ridge, Kentucky – August, 1801
 Approx. 20,000 people in attendance in a
series of meetings (one week)
 Some participants experience unexplained
physical changes, violent shaking, barking,
dancing, etc.
Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 Stone’s revival techniques which developed
over time create tensions within
Presbyterian Church
 Critics of revivals argue “more souls were
begot than saved”
 1804, Stone and followers form “Springfield
Presbytery.” By August, this group begins
to question the validity of presbyteries.
Become known as “Christian only” group
adopting baptism by immersion as only
“sacrament” of community.
Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 Horace Bushnell – (1847) “Thus the
Methodists for example have a
ministry admirably adapted, as
regards their mode of action, to the
West—a kind of light artillery that
God has organized to pursue and
overtake the fugitives that flee into
the wilderness from his presence.”
Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 Charles Grandison Finney (17921875)
 Lawyer in Adams, New York
 (1821) conversion experience - 29
yrs old
 Finney leaves Presbyterians to
become a Congregationalist
 “There is a jubilee in hell every time
the General Assembly meets.”
Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 Applies training as lawyer to
preaching
 Preaching in upstate New York
 “Burned-Over District”
 Innovations or “new measures” for
perpetuating revivalism
 Advance teams (women) move into
new regions to illicit interest and hold
prayer meetings
Revivalism and the Second Great
Awakening
 “Anxious bench” or “mourner’s bench”
similar to witness stand
 Finney is a symptom, not the cause
of the transformation of
Protestantism in America
 Revivalism is a conduit for Americans
to participate in social reforms
Education in America
 Yale College – Revivals led by President
Timothy Dwight who taught a class entitled
“Is the Bible the Word of God?”
 Lyman Beecher, student of Dwight’s, weary
of revivalist techniques but convinced about
the need to evangelize
 Beecher leaves East to serve as President
of Lane Theological Seminary in Ohio
Education in America
 Nathaniel Taylor (1786-1858)– Yale
theologian (professor) who continues
the revival efforts in the East.
 “Taylorism” or “New Haven Theology”
attempts to moderate between
Calvinism and Arminianism
 Revivalism and social reforms
Education in America
 516 colleges and universities
established before the Civil War
largely product of evangelical
Protestantism
 Educational opportunities for women
and blacks
 Oberlin College (1832) – both women
and blacks admitted
Education in America
 Troy Female Seminary in New York
(1821) - women
 Wilberforce College in Ohio (1856) &
Lincoln University in PA (1854) blacks
 “The Burned-Over District” in New
York State
Volunteer Societies
 Proliferation of voluntary associations
to promote specific ends
 Interlocking system of directorates
 Volunteer groups democratize
sentiment concerning a “Christian
America”
 National reform efforts (e.g.
abolition) with auxiliary societies at
the local level
Volunteer Societies
 Albert Barnes (Philadelphia, 1830)
 “The purposes of Christianity, require
that that wealth should be
consecrated to the Redeemer”
 1834 – receipts from societies exceed
9 million dollars
Volunteer Societies
 An array of missions:
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American
American
American
American
American
American
Bible Society 1816
Colonization Society 1817
Sunday School Union 1824
Tract Society 1825
Temperance Society 1826
Antislavery Society 1833
Volunteer Societies
 Underlying assumptions of voluntary
organizations
 Presumed that society needed a shared
set of specific moral values
 Emphasis on the power or force of
voluntary restraints on society
 Religion would make democracy safe for
itself
 Symbiosis of ideals of democracy and
Christianity
Volunteer Societies
 Point of dispute among religious
peoples: means by which the church
shapes American society as reforming
efforts emerge
 Example: William Ellery Channing vs.
Lyman Beecher
Volunteer Societies
 William Ellery Channing (1780–1842)
 Unitarian minister of Federal Street Church
in Boston (1803)
 Likeness to God (1828) – sermon which
argued “likeness” was the object of life
 Theology of “spiritual self-culture” which
depicted human spiritual potential aspiring
toward a benevolent God
 Slavery (1835) – early criticism of
abolitionism of institution of slavery
Volunteer Societies
 Lyman Beecher (1775–1863)
 Congregational minister in Litchfield,
Connecticut until 1826
 Initially opposed the abolition of the
“standing order” of church-state relations in
Connecticut (1817)
 Pastor of Hanover Street Church, Boston
 Launches a campaign against New England
Unitarians
Volunteer Societies
 Beecher’s theology changes over time
given his observation of volunteer
associations
 Influenced by Finney & Taylor
 1835 – tried for heresy on the
grounds that he had departed from
the Westminster Confession’s position
concerning original sin
Volunteer Societies
 President of Lane Seminary (18321850)
 Children: Henry Ward Beecher and
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Women and Religious Life
 Institutional structural reforms of
religion help women to achieve a
more prominent role in American
religious life
 Volunteer societies, domesticity
 Institutional controls on ministry
 Antoinette Brown Blackwell – first
regularly ordained woman in America
Women and Religious Life
 Blackwell was ordained as a
Congregational minister on
September 15, 1853
 Ardent feminist and suffragist
throughout her life
Women and Religious Life
 In the era of the Republic, women
constitute a substantial proportion of
congregants in Protestant and Catholic
churches
 Estimates suggest nearly 2 out of every 3
religious practitioners were women
 With the “feminization of religion” in
America came changing archetypes
 Perhaps the most critical change was in the
interpretation of Jesus as Christ
Women and Religious Life
 Claims of Jesus’ divinity are slowly recast
with the understanding of Jesus as “the
greatest of all humans” stressing him as an
exemplar of meekness and humility; a
sacrificial victim of humanity
 Such a shift in theological emphasis had
substantial implications for antebellum
America which we will explore next time