The Marketplace of Religion in the
British Colonies & Early Republic
Eileen Luhr
eluhr@csulb.edu
Focus questions & outline for presentation:
How can teachers integrate religious history into social,
political, and intellectual history?
3 sub questions:
1. How did the "marketplace of religion" alter religious beliefs and
institutions during the Great Awakening & American Revolution?
2. How did the Enlightenment alter religious beliefs and institutions?
a) Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
b) the Constitution
3. How did disestablishment affect religion in the early Republic?
Content standards for presentation:
8.1 Students understand the major events preceding the founding of the nation and relate
their significance to the development of American constitutional democracy.
1. Describe the relationship between the moral and political ideas of the Great
Awakening and the development of revolutionary fervor.
8.2 Students analyze the political principles underlying the U.S. Constitution and
compare the enumerated and implied powers of the federal government.
5. Understand the significance of Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom as a
forerunner of the First Amendment and the origins, purpose, and differing views of the
founding fathers on the issue of the separation of church and state.
11.1 Students analyze the significant events in the founding of the nation and its attempts
to realize the philosophy of government described in the Declaration of
Independence.
1. Describe the Enlightenment and the rise of democratic ideas as the context in which
the nation was founded.
2. Analyze the ideological origins of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers’
philosophy of divinely bestowed unalienable natural rights, the debates on the drafting
and ratification of the Constitution, and the addition of the Bill of Rights.
11.3 Students analyze the role religion played in the founding of America, its lasting
moral, social, and political impacts, and issues regarding religious liberty.
1. Describe the contributions of various religious groups to American civic principles and
social reform movements…
2. Analyze the great religious revivals and the leaders involved in them, including the
First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening....
5. Describe the principles of religious liberty found in the Establishment and Free
Exercise clauses of the First Amendment, including the debate on the issue of
separation of church and state.
Three key concepts for today:
1.
The marketplace of ideas: Through case studies, we’ll examine the
changes religious beliefs underwent in the 18th century, particularly
during the Great Awakening & the Revolution. We’ll look at the role
that religion played in the “cultural marketplace” and in the American
Revolution.
2.
Individual autonomy, religion, and the Enlightenment: The Great
Awakening, like the Enlightenment, “placed the individual at the
center of the search for truth.” Both traditions encouraged colonists
to question traditional authority (Lambert, 10).
3.
Consequences of disestablishment. Disestablishment created
what historian Jonathan Butler has described as a “spiritual
hothouse” for religion. The result was the proliferation of religious
groups that were, for the first time, distinctly “American.” In the
words of historian Nathan Hatch, the early republic witnessed the
“democratization” of American Christianity. Believers’ enthusiasm led
them to become involved in benevolent work that included home
visits, temperance movement, and, in some cases, abolition.
Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
2. Students analyze how change happens at different rates at
different times; understand that some aspects can change while
others remain the same; and understand that change is complicated
and affects not only technology and politics but also values and
beliefs.
Research, Evidence, and Point of View
4. Students construct and test hypotheses; collect, evaluate, and
employ information from multiple primary and secondary sources;
and apply it in oral and written presentations.
Historical Interpretation
1. Students show the connections, causal and otherwise between
particular historical events and larger social, economic, and political
trends and developments.
Why study religious history?
– ideas about human nature, equality,
freedom, community
– intersection with non-religious ideas in
economics, politics, and culture
– interactions between social groups: religion
included groups who were excluded from the
political process, including non-elites, white
women, and slave men and women.
Focus Question #1
How did the "marketplace of religion" alter religious beliefs and
institutions during the First Great Awakening & American Revolution?
questions:
• How did the First Great Awakening alter religious beliefs and
attitudes about established religions?
• How did new markets & people affect religious beliefs?
• How did religious beliefs and practices influence the American
Revolution?
key concept: the marketplace of religion and the marketplace of
ideas: In the early years of colonization, it was easier for religious
authorities to maintain religious uniformity in their colony. The First
Great Awakening occurred during a period when new ideas and
markets challenged these religious beliefs. Historians now suggest
that religions had to compete within the marketplace of ideas. This
concept points toward disestablishment
How did the First Great Awakening alter religious
beliefs and attitudes about established religions?
“The original planters had vowed to keep divergent ideas out of their
settlements, a task that became ever more difficult with a growing
population pushing against town borders and an expanding commerce
bringing hawkers and peddlers with their new goods and ideas. In the
end, defenders of local institutions and traditions failed, as many within
their communities eagerly embraced the newcomers and their wares.
Insistent upon exercising choice, consumers, whether considering
manufactured goods or religious notions, demanded the right to
choose for themselves. The result was a new, more expansive
definition of religious freedom, one characterized by religious
competition among the sects. The world of the settled ministry was
turned upside down. No longer able to count on a monopoly within
their parishes, clergyman had to woo individuals who were now
empowered to decide religious matters for themselves.”
– Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in
America (Princeton UP, 2003), p. 124.
marketplace of religion
Peter Annet, A Discourse on Government and Religion (Boston, 1750)
“Religion, like Trade, ought to be free. It is
best dealing at an open market; by that
means we have a more reasonable
rate…Why should not every man chuse for
himself in spirituals, as well as in
temporals, and buy those wares he likes
best, or thinks he has most need of,
seeing he must pay for them.”
Religion & the First Great Awakening
“Forty years before the American Revolution, a religious revolution
swept through the colonies in a spiritual revival known as the Great
Awakening, and thousands of evangelical Dissenters embraced the
radical notion that individual experience, not church dogma or
government statute, was authoritative in religious matters. Salvation,
they argued, occurred through the outpouring of God's grace in what
they called spiritual “New Birth.” Thus empowered, converted men
and women, called New Lights, challenged both church and state
authority in matters of faith. Many left their own congregations and
started Separate Churches or joined with such radical sects as
Baptists. They insisted that religion was strictly voluntary, and that
no government could compel an individual to subscribe to any belief
or practice. The result was a new place for religion, a religious
marketplace in which individual men and women chose among
voluntary, competing sects.” (Lambert, 8)
Example 1: The Marketplace of Religion in Virginia
Christ Church, Virginia (built c. 1735)
- What is the building made of?
- What can you tell about the social status of the members of this church?
Interior and pulpit of Christ Church
- Where is the pulpit? Where do members sit?
- what does this say about the church members’ beliefs?
Religion in Virginia after the First Great Awakening:
South Quay Baptist Church 1775 (left) and Mt. Shiloh Baptist
- looking at the architecture and layout, how might these churches differ in beliefs from the
Anglican Church?
Example 2: The Marketplace of Religion in New York
New York, 1730
The Marketplace of Religion in New York
New York, 1771
Example 3: George Whitefield, itinerant evangelist “trafficking in the Lord”
(Lambert, 127)
Benjamin Franklin describes the preaching of George Whitefield in 1739:
In 1739 arrived among us from Ireland the Reverend Mr. Whitefield, who had made himself remarkable
there as an itinerant preacher. He was at first permitted to preach in some of our churches; but the clergy, taking a
dislike to him, soon refus'd him their pulpits, and he was oblig'd to preach in the fields. The multitudes of all sects
and denominations that attended his sermons were enormous, and it was matter of speculation to me, who was
one of the number, to observe the extraordinary influence of his oratory on his hearers, and bow much they
admir'd and respected him, notwithstanding his common abuse of them, by assuring them that they were naturally
half beasts and half devils. It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From
being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seem'd as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could
not walk thro' the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.
He had a loud and clear voice, and articulated his words and sentences so perfectly, that he might be
heard and understood at a great distance, especially as his auditories, however numerous, observ'd the most
exact silence. He preach'd one evening from the top of the Court-house steps, which are in the middle of Marketstreet, and on the west side of Second-street, which crosses it at right angles. Both streets were fill'd with his
hearers to a considerable distance. Being among the hindmost in Market-street, I had the curiosity to learn how far
he could be heard, by retiring backwards down the street towards the river; and I found his voice distinct till I came
near Front-street, when some noise in that street obscur'd it. Imagining then a semi-circle, of which my distance
should be the radius, and that it were fill'd with auditors, to each of whom I allow'd two square feet, I computed that
he might well be heard by more than thirty thousand. This reconcil'd me to the newspaper accounts of his having
preach'd to twenty-five thousand people in the fields, and to the antient histories of generals haranguing whole
armies, of which I had sometimes doubted.
By hearing him often, I came to distinguish easily between sermons newly compos'd, and those which he
had often preach'd in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improv'd by frequent repetitions
that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turn'd and well plac'd, that,
without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleas'd with the discourse; a pleasure of much the
same kind with that receiv'd from an excellent piece of musick. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over
those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.
source: Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New York: Collier & Son, 1909), pp.104-108.
Originally published 1771-1788.
Focus question #2
How did Enlightenment ideas affect American religious life after the
Revolution?
Key Concept: Both the Great Awakening & the Enlightenment “placed the individual at
the center of the search for truth.” Both traditions encouraged colonists to question
traditional authority (Lambert, 10).
Historians describe this process:
Gordon Wood, “Evangelical America and Early Mormonism,” New York History
(October 1980): 358-86: “Once ordinary people found that they could change
traditional religion as completely as they were changing traditional politics, they had no
need for deism or infidelity…Evangelical Christianity and the democracy of these
years, the very democracy with which Jefferson rode to power and destroyed
Federalism, emerged together and were interrelated.
Historians R. Laurence Moore and Isaac Kramnick describe the “Godless
constitution”: they argue that the founders envisioned a nation with a “godless
Constitution and a godless politics.” Religion’s influence was to rest in directing “the
customs of the community” and in “regulating domestic life” without subjecting it to the
fortunes of a political faction (22). The liberal state’s function was to protect rights, not
establish truths. As Frank Lambert suggests, the founders believed that “true religion”
was located through “free rational inquiry” rather than church doctrine or government
fiat (3) Finally, as Moore and Kramnick point out, for nearly two hundred years
religious critics complained that the Constitution failed to use the word “God.”
John Locke, Letter Concern Toleration (1689)
•
[the state] seems to me to be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving, and
advancing their own civil interests. Civil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolence of body; and
the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture, and the like. It is the
duty of the civil magistrate, by the impartial execution of equal laws, to secure unto all the people in
general, and to every one of his subjects in particular the just possession of these things belonging
to this life….Every man has commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error, and,
by reasoning, to draw him into truth; but to give laws, receive obedience, and compel with
the sword, belongs to none but the magistrate. And upon this ground, I affirm that the
magistrate’s power extends not to the establishing of any articles of faith, or form of
worship, by the force of his laws.” Excerpted from Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The
Godless Constitution, pp. 75-6
Oliver Ellsworth, delegate to Constitutional Convention (1787)
•
“To come to the true principal…The business of civil government is to protect the citizen in his
rights…civil government has no business to meddle with the private concerns of the
people…I am accountable not to man, but to God, for the religious opinions which I
embrace…A test law is…the offspring of error and the spirit of persecution. Legislatures have no
right to set up an inquisition and examine into the private opinions of men.” (source: Kramnick and
Moore, p. 42).
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII (1781)
•
“(O)ur rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The
rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to
our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to
others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It
neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot
be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making
him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but
will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose
to them, they will support the true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of
their investigation. They are the natural enemies of error, and of error only.”
Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786) (excerpt)
Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free;
that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil
incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a
departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body
and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty
power to do;
that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical,
who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over
the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true
and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and
maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time...
that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than
our opinions in physics or geometry; that, therefore, the proscribing any citizen as
unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to the
offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious
opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in
common with his fellow citizens he has a natural right...
[be it enacted by the general assembly that] no man shall be compelled to frequent or
support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced,
restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on
account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess,
and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the
same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
Religion in the Constitution
Preamble:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to
ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the
United States of America.
– Comparison to the Declaration of Independence?
Article VI:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of
the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of
the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or
Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be
required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United
States.
- Oath or Affirmation: some may object to oaths or invoking the name of a
deity they did not believe in; no religious test for federal office
First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances.
– Establishment Clause AND free exercise clause
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)
“Of the Expence of the Institutions for the Instruction of People of all Ages”
The interested and active zeal of religious teachers can be dangerous and
troublesome only where there is, either but one sect tolerated in the society, or where
the whole of a large society is divided into two or three great sects; the teachers of
each acting by concert, and under a regular discipline and subordination. But that
zeal must be altogether innocent where the society is divided into two or three
hundred, or perhaps into as many thousand small sects, of which no one could be
considerable enough to disturb the public tranquillity. The teachers of each sect,
seeing themselves surrounded on all sides with more adversaries than friends, would
be obliged to learn that candour and moderation which is so seldom to be found
among the teachers of those great sects, whose tenets, being supported by the civil
magistrate, are held in veneration by almost all the inhabitants of extensive kingdoms
and empires, and who therefore see nothing round them but followers, disciples, and
humble admirers. The teachers of each little sect, finding themselves almost alone,
would be obliged to respect those of almost every other sect, and the concessions
which they would mutually find it both convenient and agreeable to make to one
another, might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the greater part of them to that
pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, and
fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established;
but such as positive law has perhaps never yet established, and probably never will
establish in any country: because, with regard to religion, positive law always has
been, and probably always will be, more or less influenced by popular superstition
and enthusiasm.
The origins of the secular tradition:
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (1794)
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life...
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church,
by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any
church that I know of. My own mind is my own church...
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us
at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the
first communication — after this, it is only an account of something which that person
says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe
it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a
revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the
commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him,
because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other
authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no
internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such
as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without
having recourse to supernatural intervention.
Focus question #3
How did disestablishment affect religion in the early Republic?
key concept
Institutional proliferation. Disestablishment created what historian Jonathan Butler has described as a “spiritual hothouse” for religion. The
result was the proliferation of religious groups that were, for the first time, distinctly “American.” In the words of historian Nathan Hatch, the
early republic witnessed the “democratization” of American Christianity. Moreover, believers’ enthusiasm led them to become involved in
benevolent work that included home visits, temperance movement, and, in some cases, abolition.
Historians write about this process
“The ideology of the Revolution aggravated this social disintegration but at the same time helped make it meaningful.
The egalitarianism of the Revolution explained and justified for common people their new independence and distance
from one another. The change and disruptions were offset by the Revolutionary promise for the future of the
country…Traditional structures of authority crumbled under the momentum of the Revolution, and common people
increasingly discovered that they no longer had to accept the old distinctions that had separated them from the upper
ranks of the gentry.
As the traditional connections of people fell away, many Americans found themselves in a marginal or what
anthropologists call a liminal state of transition and were driven to find or fabricate new ways of relating to one
another…People were urged to transcend their parochial folk and kin loyalties and to reach out to embrace even
distant strangers. The Enlightenment’s stress on modern civility came together with the traditional message of
Christian charity to make the entire period from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson a great era of benevolence and
communitarianism.
The Enlightenment was not repudiated but popularized. The great democratic revolution of the period forged a new
popular amalgam out of traditional folk beliefs and the literary culture of the gentry...Like the culture as a whole,
religion was powerfully affected by these popularizing developments. Subterranean folk beliefs and fetishes emerged
into the open and blended with traditional Christian practices to created a wildly spreading evangelical enthusiasm.
Ordinary people cut off from traditional social relationships were freer than ever before to express publicly hitherto
repressed or vulgar emotions…
The American Revolution itself was invoked by this evangelical challenge to existing authority, and Christianity for
some radicals became republicanized. As in government so in religion. The people were their own theologians and
could no longer rely on others to tell them what to believe…” (366-74)
institutional proliferation:
the camp meeting
source: P.S. Duval, ca. 1801, from Joseph Smith, Old Redstone
Peter Cartwright, memories of the Cane Ridge Revival,
1801-1804
In this revival originated our camp-meetings, and in both these denominations they were held
every year, and, indeed, have been ever since, more or less. They would erect their camps with
logs or frame them, and cover them with clapboards or shingles. They would also erect a shed,
sufficiently large to protect five thousand people from wind and rain, and cover it with boards or
shingles; build a large stand, seat the shed, and here they would collect together from forty to
fifty miles around, sometimes further than that. Ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty ministers, of
different denominations, would come together and preach night and day, four or five days
together; and, indeed, I have known these camp-meetings to last three or four weeks, and great
good resulted from them. I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men under one
powerful sermon, and I have seen and heard more than five hundred Christians all shouting
aloud the high praises of God at once; and I will venture to assert that many happy thousands
were awakened and converted to God at these camp-meetings. Some sinners mocked, some of
the old dry professors opposed, some of the old starched Presbyterian preachers preached
against these exercises, but still the work went on and spread almost in every direction,
gathering additional force, until our country seemed all coming home to God….
Just in the midst of our controversies on the subject of the powerful exercises among the people
under preaching, a new exercise broke out among us, called the jerks, which was overwhelming
in its effects upon the bodies and minds of the people. No matter whether they were saints or
sinners, they would be taken under a warm song or sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking
all over, which they could not by an possibility avoid, and the more they resisted the more they
jerked, If they would not strive against it and pray in good earnest, the jerking would usually
abate. I have seen more than five hundred persons jerking at one time in my large
congregations. Most usually persons taken with the jerks, to obtain relief, as they said, would
rise up and dance. Some would run, but could not get away. Some would resist; on such the
jerks were generally very severe.
other religious sects and traditions that originated
or grew during the Second Great Awakening
Existing religions that grew:
• Baptists (origins of Southern Baptists)
• Methodists
New religions:
• Mormons
• Disciples of Christ
• Millerites (Seventh-Day Adventists)
• Communitarian groups
• Finneyite revivals
• Transcendentalism & Unitarianism
American religious diversity: the eight leading church bodies in the United States
by County, 2000 * (measures church membership, not belief)
•
Primary Sources on the web:
Divining America: http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/divam.htm
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic: http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/
African American Odyssey: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aointro.html
Selected secondary sources:
Patricia Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America
(Oxford UP, 1986).
Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton UP, 2003)
Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular
State (W. W. Norton & Company, 1996).
R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture (Oxford UP, 1994).