The religiously unaffiliated

You may have heard about the Pew Report from a few weeks ago. John Turner at The Anxious Bench wrote about the survey and linked to Mark Tooley’s article on the report. Tooley puts the report in some historical context. Here’s a key quote, part of which Turner quoted as well:

The myth that America was once a solidly Christian and church going nation that only recently has secularized is widely believed by religious and secular alike. But the 40 percent of Americans who’ve regularly across the last 80 years at least claimed they attend church regularly is almost certainly higher than church going was in the 19th century, which itself was likely higher than the 18th century, as a footnote in the Pew study briefly admits.

If America now today seems more secular, it is because cultural elites 100 years ago, including college presidents and faculty, publishers and newspaper editors, were likely to be churchmen. Fifty years ago, cultural elites were less churchy but remained at least respectful of religion. Today’s cultural elites, joined by popular entertainment and broadcast journalism, clustered in coastal cities or in university towns in between, are neither respectful nor even very aware of religious America. Almost certainly the 6 percent of Americans whom Pew reports are atheist or agnostic are disproportionately represented within their ranks.

I think that Tooley underestimates the importance of the cultural shift, but his article is still worth the read. As my friend Kevin pointed out when I shared the link on Facebook, Tooley seems to equate churchgoing with Christianity. It’s important to think about the wider cultural atmosphere. I wonder if there were some people in, say, 18th- and 19th-century America who didn’t attend church regularly who may have had a more Christian outlook than some who are regular church attenders today, simply because the cultural environment (the “plausibility structures,” as sociologist Peter Berger calls them) supported Christian belief more than it does now.

The Stamp Act as a hellish plot

I’ve been reading Thomas Kidd’s God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution, which is quite good. One of the themes that he discusses is the American revolutionaries’ Christian republicanism, which saw Protestantism and English liberties as inseparable and threats to them as Catholic and from Antichrist (in my understanding, the Catholic Church and Antichrist were closely identified for many early modern Protestants). Here was one part that stuck out:

An angry stamp distributor in Philadelphia, John Hughes, … reported that Presbyterians there had begun to question the authority of the king, declaring that they would honor “No King but King Jesus.” Parliament decided to repeal the Stamp Act, realizing that there was no point to risking civil war over the issue. But to the colonists, the repeal offered only a reminder to be vigilant in their defense of Christian liberty against the tyrannical spirit of this new manifestation of Antichrist. The Boston Gazette blamed an “Infernal, atheistical, Popish” cohort for passing the Stamp Act, but rejoiced that their “DIABOLICAL Purposes” had been frustrated.

One Connecticut account of the repeal shows how deeply the colonists had come to associate political tyranny with the spirit of Antichrist. When word arrived of the repeal in 1766, a crowed composed largely of evangelicals celebrated, saying “that victory was gained over the beast, and over his mark … [and] we can yet buy and sell without the mark, or the number of his name.” They called the king’s supporters “papists.” Pastor Joseph Emerson of Pepperell, Massachusetts, speaking at a thanksgiving service celebrating the repeal, noted that the protesters believed that their “civil and religious privileges” were were both jeopardized by the act. If the Parliament was not bound to respect the colonists’ rights in the matter of taxation, what would become of their religious liberty?” (33)

I find it surprising how quickly this language could switch targets from France (an actual Catholic and absolute monarchy) to Britain (a Protestant and constitutional monarchy). You can also see that conspiracy theories have a long history in American culture (and probably many other cultures too). The supposed Antichrist of Catholic France became America’s first ally, and Kidd notes that one preacher compared France to the Good Samaritan, and some hoped that the American alliance could lead to French conversion to Protestantism. Finally, it’s interesting to note that the French monarchy was far less threatening to liberty than the Republic that eventually replaced it.

None of this is intended to be condescending to the people of this period, but it’s just interesting to step back and look at it with the perspective of a couple hundred years.

Jonathan Edwards as pastor

Jeff Lacine, writing on the Desiring God blog, briefly tells three stories to illustrate Edwards’ approach to the ministry.  Here is one:

Edwards’ first call to the pastorate, at age 19, was to a splinter church (a recent church split) in New York. He labored to reconcile the church he was pastoring to its mother. He accomplished his aim in two years, working himself out of the pastorate.

His ability to shepherd a whole church, full of anger and hurt over a recent division, back to submission and unity with its former rival shows amazing pastoral prowess. Those of you who have been a part of a church after a split know what kind of feat was accomplished in this work.

To Change the World, Chapter 5

Hunter now turns to history to show how his explanations of cultural change can explain important changes: the Christianization of Rome, the Christianization of the European barbarians, the Carolingian Renaissance of the 8^th and 9^th centuries, the Reformation, religious revivals like the Great Awakening, the abolition movement in Britain, the Enlightenment, the European socialist movement, and secular and modern culture in the West.  Here is how he sums up the dynamics of change, even with the different relationships of the necessary elements of cultural change:

At every point of challenge and change, we find a rich source of patronage that provided resources for intellectuals and educators who, in the context of dense networks, imagine, theorize, and propagate an alternative culture.  Often enough, alongside these elites are artists, poets, musicians, and the like who symbolize, narrate, and popularize this vision.  New institutions are created that give form to that culture, enact it, and, in so doing, give tangible expression to it.  Together, these overlapping networks of leaders and resources form a vibrant cultural economy that gives articulation, in multiple forms, and critical mass to the ideals and practices and goods of the alternative culture in ways that both defy yet still resonate with the existing social environment. (77-78)

Change can only occur when the leaders and networks of this alternative culture “challenge, penetrate, and redefine the status structure at the center of cultural life” either from the center of the culture or from a position outside the center.  Political power is most effective when it “creates space” for the development of the alternative culture rather than when it “imposes a cultural agenda” (78).

As a history teacher, I really enjoyed this chapter as it gave a cultural interpretation of the events that I have listed above.  I’m not going to go into depth on his explanations, but I’m going to include a short summary of some of the developments that he talks about:

The Christianization of Rome: While Christianity began very much in the cultural periphery of the Roman Empire, the ties of urban commerce and the Greek language aided the early church, as did the well-educated and well-born church fathers.  Other wealthy Christians could also provide funds.   Christians eventually began to produce culture that could not only defend itself but to be taken seriously as an alternative vision of its own and incorporated the Roman concept of education that trained the elite to be leaders (in the case of the church, bishops) but also declared themselves to be ‘lovers of the poor’ ” (55).  Bishops became important leaders in the religious and legal lives of their cities.

The Christianization of European tribes: Monasteries cooperated with the new leaders of Europe to Christianize Europe and build on a Roman-Christian-Germanic culture on which laid the foundation of the Middle Ages.

The Carolingian Renaissance: Charlemagne and Frankish nobles cooperated with clergy (especially Alcuin, the leader of Charlemagne’s educational efforts) to improve scholarship and education in Charlemagne’s empire.

The Reformation: Following on the humanist revival of scholarship in the Renaissance, well-educated scholars like Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and Beza benefitted from the printing press, the wealth of cities, networks of scholars and merchants, and the protection of nobles as they enacted their reforms.

Great Awakening and British abolition: Well-known heroes like George Whitefield and William Wilberforce were part of networks of colleagues and supporters.  Whitefield benefitted from the publishing industry and the transatlantic economy, as well as his and fellow leaders’ elite educations.  Wilberforce’s England was a place where the Enlightenment language of freedom also supported the idea of abolition, in cooperation with the Whigs.

The Enlightenment: An parallel patronage network of salons, royal academies, and other societies produced a movement unconnected by patronage to the various churches but rather connected formally or informally to the governments of Europe.  His summary of the change is too good not to quote:

At the time that John Locke died and Rousseau was born in the early years of the eighteenth century, it was unimaginable that Christendom would ever be diminished.  Yet in less than a century, traditional Christian authority had either been overturned (as in France) or had been forever weakened.  In this we see a cultural transformation of world historical significance.  To see this only, or primarily, as an evolution in the history of ideas fails to grasp the nature and character of the change that took place.  Rather the Enlightenment was a revolution generated by an alternative network of leaders, providing an alternative base of resources, oriented toward the development of an alternative cultural vision (a new anthropology, epistemology, ethics, sociality, and politics), established in part through alternative institutions, all operating at the elite centers of cultural formation.  (75)

As I said, this chapter was really good and gave strong evidence for his theory of cultural transformation.  At the same time, it would be interesting to read critiques as well, especially by historians who study these periods.  It’s natural for his model to look airtight when he provides the narrative.  But like I said, it was good.

One important point that he raises is patronage.  All cultural products have to have some kind of patronage.  In our economy, the most obvious patron is the consumer, which dictates to some extent the cultural products that are produced.  But a deeper study of elite patronage in our culture would also be interesting.  Wealthy benefactors are still around, universities allow for scholars to engage in research that produces books that few non-academics will ever read, and there are other examples of patronage outside of the market as well.  It seems like understanding patronage is one key aspect in understanding culture.

Book Review: Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln

My first response to Noll’s work is to express my appreciation and respect for the amount of research and expertise that went into writing America’s God.  Noll has a tremendous grasp of the different theological traditions of 18th- and 19th-century America, and displays impressive familiarity with the broader history of the United States in the same period.  He shows convincingly that theology in America was adapted to the national culture of republican government, suspicion of tradition and claims to authority, and commonsense moral reasoning.

Noll realizes that a history of theology and intellectual developments doesn’t make a history of America, and he acknowledges that this does focus on an elite set of intellectual theologians.  But he makes the case that these ideas were important for the broader society and that theology imported ideas from the broader society.

America’s God can be difficult to follow at times, and I sometimes felt like I was backtracking over the same ground that had been discussed earlier.  Noll writes in his introduction that the length of time that it took him to write this book may have taken a toll on the clarity of the arguement, and I think that’s probably true to some extent.  There are also times where the exploration of theology is incredibly deep, and others where I felt that brief summaries needed to be fleshed out more.  At the same time, the scope of his work probably necessitated that this would be the case.

America’s God is a challenging book.  For someone with a professional, academic interest in American religious history, I would strongly recommend it.  I think that is Noll’s goal: to make a contribution to the field of early American history that includes theological development.  For others, it would depend on your interests.

In his comments on this post, Joel asked me what Noll’s point of view is.  In the conclusion of the book, Noll writes that he finds Jonathan Edwards to be the best American theologian “for the purposes of understanding God, the self, and the world as they really are.”  He agrees with the intellectual and theological depth of the Calvinism of the Puritans, Edwards, and George Whitefield, but also appreciates the evangelistic and social activism of the 19th-century American evangelicals in a cultural environment “with tradition, heirarchy, and deference to historical precedent discredited by the ideology of the Revolution.”  He states:

It is an oft-stated truism, but worthy of repetition, that if the theological and ecclesiastical changes described here had not taken place, it is not humanly conceivable that American religious beliefs and practices would have remained, by comparison with the rest of the Western world, so relatively vigorous as the remain to this day.” (444)

At the same time, he believes that the Civil War greatly damaged this American theology, meaning that “American theology lurched, rather than self-consciously thought, its way into the modern world” (445).  I’d be interested to hear his explanation of what followed it.

Calvinism and Methodism get Americanized

Chapters 13-17 of America’s God consider the process by which the two major theological traditions in early America became Americanized; in other words, each began using the language and assumptions that fit with the broader culture’s republican and commonsense philosophies.  This meant the softening of beliefs about man’s inherent and inherited depravity into a more free-will belief that people chose to sin, influenced by the fall of Adam.  This meant modifying the traditional Calvinist belief that naturally sinful people had to be called by God, and the traditional Methodist belief that naturally sinfully people were rendered able to choose only by God’s “prevenient grace” made possible by Christ’s universal atonement (in other words, only God’s grace rendered people able to choose or reject Christ).  In both traditions, there was also a greater confidence that human beings could know the truths of religion through common sense and a “Baconian” approach to the Bible that imitated the scientific method.  There was also a greater effort to speak about God not as an absolute ruler of the universe, but as a benevolent ruler that did not engage in tyranny, showing the concern of the republican culture in America.

Noll believes that both Calvinism and Methodism became Americanized through different paths, although both involved debate with theological opponents.  For Calvinists, there was a great concern that a healthy society demanded continued revivals, and that the traditional Calvinist emphasis on God’s initiation of salvation did not provide a good foundation for revivals.  The most radical example of this from someone in a historically Reformed denomination is Charles Finney, who believed that overturning the traditional Calvinist beliefs was the only path to revival.  Another part of the Calvinist changes was the debate with the Unitarians, who denied the Trinity.  These debates also helped to “Americanize” Reformed theology.  Noll believes that the modified Calvinists who emerged in the early 1800s did not seek to change theology for the sake of change, but rather to defend and revive the Christian church.  For them, a strong church led to a strong and free society.  Even a conservative leader like Charles Hodge of Princeton Seminary adhered to the Baconian view of reading Scripture, used the rhetoric of common sense, and believed in the agreement of Christian and republican ideas, although his Calvinism remained much more traditional.

Methodists, on the other hand, already had the idea of free will embedded in their theology,  but they did not defend it in American terms (i.e., using commonsense philosophy).  Through the influence of American Methodist leader Francis Asbury, Methodist theology stayed grounded in John Wesley’s interpretation of the Bible.  Noll believes that the Americanization of Methodism occurred as they debated with the Calvinists, and began to explain Methodist free will theology in philosophical terms rather than in Wesley’s terms.  The exception was the “Holiness” strain of Methodist theology pioneered by Phoebe Palmer, which retained its strongly Scriptural base but also did not make much impact in intellectual culture.

Here is Noll’s summary of the different paths toward Americanization:

Methodist theology Americanized as it sought to win respectability and to win over Calvinists, whereas the older traditions from the colonial era had Americanized in order to forge a national destiny under God. (364)

Theological innovations in the American republic

Chapter 12 of America’s God explains the tenets of what Noll calls “American theology.”  He believes that as American evangelicals built a new culture, they also absorbed its assumptions; having torn down traditional authorities, they instead defended Christianity or their denominations with the language of republicanism and commonsense moral ideas rather than relying solely on the theological traditions of their European heritage.  He describes the following developments:

• A greater emphasis on human will to accept God, as opposed to the Calvinist teaching that God’s grace needed to enable a person to believe
• A bolder assertion that individuals could interpret the Bible without any help from tradition, even Protestant traditions
• A diminished focus on the mystery of God in favor of a more confident approach to explaining God’s purposes according to rational principles (for example, Charles Finney’s manuals on how one could guarantee successful revivals by proper planning)
• An identification of human sinfulness with actual sins committed, as opposed to traditional ideas of a sinful nature inherited from Adam
• A new vocabulary to talk about theology that used the language of republicanism and commonsense ideas: “benevolence, common sense, conscience, consciousness, freedom, government, interest, justice, power, primitive, reason, science, simple, virtue” (232)

Not everyone incorporated all of these developments to their fullest extent, of course, but Noll gives examples of how they showed up in disputes between denominations as well as in disputes between Christians and skeptics.

The idea that Christianity could be explained and proved through common sense, Noll argues, was very pervasive.  He also includes some of the criticisms by contemporaries who disagreed (for various reasons) with the appropriation of Enlightenment language and ideas into Christian theology.  This was the most cogent, I thought:

[Common sense theology] reasons from time to eternity with vast dexterity and ease; establishing, by strict Baconian comparison and induction, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the truth of revelation; but it is all in such a way as turned eternity itself into time, and forces the whole invisible world to become a mere abstraction from the world of sense. (250)

In other words, it imposes our logic on God.  This, it seems to me, is the danger of the developments that Noll describes in this chapter.  If the truth about God is easily seen through common sense, what happens if common sense is more malleable than we think?  What must have seemed like permanent common sense 200 years ago was probably shaped by Christian assumptions.  If that shifts, will Christian teachings always seem like common sense?  Furthermore, it seems risky to think that God can be so easily explained by human logic.  This always risks capturing God in our assumptions.

There’s always a place for appealing to common sense when we explain and defend our faith.  But there’s also a risk in relying on it too much.

Influences on American theology: republicanism, commonsense morality, and the market

Noll now explores the changes in American theology that came after independence.  Noll believes that the new, republican order that overturned the religious and social establishments of the colonial period needed new institutions, and the expanding evangelical churches provided just that.  See this post for my summary of his explanation.

Chapter 11 of America’s God shows the ways that different trends impacted American theology.  Here are my brief explanations of his points:

• Republicanism, oftentimes rooted in ancient Roman, Renaissance, and English Whig ideas and associated with the upper-class, began to be influenced by liberalism, which focused more on individual political and economic freedoms and saw a place for greater individualism, competition, and the clash of competing interests.  Though some have placed them in opposition, Noll believes that they existed together.  Churches even helped this synthesis by preaching both individual responsibility and membership in a religious community.
• Virtue, so important to republican thinkers, was thought of as primarily a responsibility of the family.  This actually increased women’s significance because of their occupation of the domestic sphere.
• The North and South (he probably should say elites in the North and South, in my opinion) held different attitudes about republicanism.  Northern thinkers, from a more commercial and liberal society, embraced the liberal ideas described above.  Southern thinkers argued that an agricultural, slave-holding society was a better basis for a republic, and they tended to be skeptical of commercialism.
• The commonsense moral philosophy provided a new basis for morality in a nation without a hereditary monarchy or official church.  Morality was plain to the average person, not the province of elites.  My thought: this is pretty much the basis of most political appeals from our two major parties in America today.
• Christians often expressed their theology in the terms of republican ideas and commonsense morality.
• Noll argues that the growing commercial market of the early 19th century did not have as much influence as one might think on theology.  Rather, American religious thinkers accepted the market while also holding on to Protestant ideas about how to manage money.  Noll writes that American evangelicals believed that nearly complete religious freedom was an environment in which their faith could flourish, and he believes that they may have applied this same attitude (more freedom is better) to economics.

Evangelicals and the Building of an American Culture

Chapter 10 of America’s God discusses the cultural consequences of the rapid expansion of evangelicalism.  How, he asks, did evangelicalism come to play such an important role in the culture?

While crediting the interpretations of Gordon Wood, Robert Wiebe, and Nathan Hatch that stress the importance of the destruction of hierarchies by the American Revolution, he also believes that the evangelical churches helped to build the national culture in a way that has been underappreciated by historians.  He agrees with John Murrin’s statement that American society at the time of the adoption of the Constitution (1787) was “a roof without walls” (195).  In other words, it had a political framework without the national culture to support it.  Evangelicalism helped to supply this national culture.

This happened in two ways.  Evangelicals built social organizations, and not only denominational networks.  By the 1830s, voluntary agencies like Bible and Christian literature distribution societies contrasted with the local nature of most publishing.  Missionary societies that targeted the frontier and the world represented important means of connection to the frontier and non-European world.  Societies that aided the poor and promoted access to higher education took on roles that had not yet been taken on by any governments.  Noll compares the proliferation of Methodist churches and clergy with post offices and postal employees, finding similar patterns of expansion.  The post office was an important means of unifying the nation, but evangelicalism easily outdid the post office.

Secondly, evangelicals helped to supply an ideological base for the nation.  As Noll described earlier in the book, evangelical theology had come to terms with two pillars of the American Revolution, republican political theory and commonsense moral reasoning.  Noll writes that republican political theory held that freedom required virtue, and many of the founders believed that virtue needed to be upheld by religion.  This religion largely came to be evangelicalism, even though many of the most critical founders were publicly attached to it.  Churches did well in this new environment as they were not formally established but became a critical part of the cultural establishment.

This passage summed up Noll’s point well:

If for evangelicals during the Revolution “the cause of America” had become “the cause of Christ,” as the Pennsylvania Presbyterian Robert Smith put it in 1781, then the achievement of independence meant that, for many patriots, “the cause of Christ had become also “the cause of America.”  The belief that the United States was a land chosen and protected by God for special, if perhaps even millennial, purposes may not have been as widely spread during the War for Independence as is sometimes suggested.  But it did flourish in the decades after the war.  If networks of evangelical denominations and voluntary societies were building national walls under a constitutional roof, so also was the sense of elect nationhood, which was a peculiarly evangelical construction, making a significant contribution as well. (206)

This chapter was quite provocative, providing examples of how evangelicalism integrated itself into the national framework.  As Noll wrote, his explanation needs more than a few pages to be completely persuasive, but he seems to provide at least a plausible explanation for this process.

After this, I will be posting shorter entries on each chapter.

America’s God, Chapters 7-9

In Chapters 7-8 of America’s God, Mark Noll shows himself to be a careful historian as he documents how traditional and “innovative” theologies did not become “American” theologies during the period of the American Revolution.  In other words, even as “commonsense” moral philosophy and republican political theory became more accepted by evangelical Christians, they did not produce a paradigm shift in American theology.  Evangelicals like Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists became comfortable with the republican and commonsense language, though.  Noll intends to show that after the 1790s, American evangelical theology would be transformed by these ideas.  But the American Revolutionary period was not the period where this happened.  Even the nonevangelical theologies of liberal Congregationalism (marked by rationalism and universalism) and Deism did not fully acclimate themselves to American society after the Revolution.

For Noll, the transformation of evangelicalism goes along with the evangelical transformation of America.  Chapter 9 shows the amazing growth of evangelical denominations, especially the Baptists and Methodists, in the late 1700s and early 1800s.  Interestingly enough, evangelicals had not been a major force during the Revolutionary period, certainly not at their level during the Great Awakening in the 1740s.  Revivals were a local rather than intercolonial or national phenomenon.  But in the new climate after 1790, evangelicals returned as a major cultural force, bringing new members into the fold and expanding along with the American population into the western frontiers of the nation (at this point not very far west from our perspective).