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Title: The Marketplace of Religion in the Early Republic Eileen Luhr eluhr@csulb.edu


1
The Marketplace of Religion in the Early Republic
Eileen Luhr eluhr_at_csulb.edu
2
  • Methodological question for this four-part
    series
  • How can teachers integrate religious history into
    social, political, and intellectual history?
  • 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.
  • revival religion
  • Problems for studying religious history
  • The jack in the box theory of religion

3
Content standards for presentation
  • 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.
  • 12.1 Students explain the fundamental principles
    and moral values of American democracy as
    expressed in the U.S. Constitution and other
    essential documents of American democracy.
  • 2. Discuss the character of American democracy
    and its promise and perils as articulated by
    Alexis de Tocqueville.
  • 12.2 Students evaluate and take and defend
    positions on the scope and limits of rights and
    obligations as democratic citizens, the
    relationships among them, and how they are
    secured.
  • 1. Discuss the meaning and importance of each of
    the rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights
    and how each is secured (e.g., freedom of
    religion, speech, press, assembly, petition,
    privacy).
  • 12.5 Students summarize landmark U.S. Supreme
    Court interpretations of the Constitution and its
    amendments.
  • 1. Understand the changing interpretations of
    the Bill of Rights over time, including
    interpretations of the basic freedoms (religion,
    speech, press, petition, and assembly)
    articulated in the First Amendment and the due
    process and equal-protection-of-the- law clauses
    of the Fourteenth Amendment.

4
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.

5
Focus questions for todays presentation
  • Four sub-questions and sections to presentation
  • 1. How did the "marketplace of religion" alter
    religious beliefs and institutions prior in the
    late 18th century?
  • 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?
  • a) Focus on universal morality over
    denominational identity
  • b) Institutional proliferation
  • 4. How did these issues carry forward into the
    late 20th century?
  • a) American religious diversity
  • b) school court cases

6
Four key concepts for today
  • The marketplace of ideas Through case studies,
    well examine the changes religious beliefs
    underwent in the 18th century, particularly
    during the Great Awakening the Revolution.
    Well look at the role that religion played in
    the cultural marketplace.
  • 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).
  • 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. At the same time, religious
    disestablishment also meant that Americans
    worried about maintaining a moral citizenry.
    Both issues carried forward into the late
    twentieth century.
  • Religion in the late 20th century. The first
    three issues discussed in todays
    presentationthe marketplace of ideas individual
    autonomy religious diversity and concerns about
    moralitycarry forward into the late 20th
    century. We can see these issues in Supreme
    Court decisions about the role of religion in
    primary and secondary schools.

7
Question 1 How did the "marketplace of
religion" alter religious beliefs and
institutions during the late 18th century?
  • 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

8
How did the First Great Awakening alter religious
beliefs and attitudes about established religions?
  • A historian describes the process
  • 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.

9
marketplace of religionPeter 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 rateWhy 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.

10
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)

11
Example 1 The Marketplace of Religion in Virginia
  • South Quay Baptist Church, built 1775

Christ Church, built c.1735
12
Interior of Anglican Baptist churches
  • Interior, Mt. Shiloh Baptist, built c.1770s
  • Interior, Christ Church

13
Example 2 The Marketplace of Religion in New
York New York, 1730
14
The Marketplace of Religion in New York New
York, 1771
15
Example 3 George Whitefield, itinerant
evangelist trafficking in the Lord (Lambert,
127)
16
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
    Market-street, 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.

17
Focus question 2How did the Enlightenment alter
religious beliefs and institutions?
  • 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 infidelityEvangelical
    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 a Godless constitution they argue
    that the founders envisioned a nation with a
    godless Constitution and a godless politics.
    Religions 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
    states 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.

18
  • 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 magistrates
    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 principalThe business of
    civil government is to protect the citizen in his
    rightscivil government has no business to meddle
    with the private concerns of the peopleI am
    accountable not to man, but to God, for the
    religious opinions which I embraceA test law
    isthe 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.

19
  • 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 dothat 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.

20
  • 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

21
  • 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.

22
The origins of the secular traditionThomas
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.

23
Focus question 3How did disestablishment affect
religion in the early Republic?
  • key concept
  • Institutional proliferation and creating a
    moral citizenry. 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. At the same time, religious
    disestablishment also meant that Americans
    worried about creating moral citizens.
  • A historian describes 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 countryTraditional 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
    anotherPeople were urged to transcend their
    parochial folk and kin loyalties and to reach out
    to embrace even distant strangers. The
    Enlightenments 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 (Gordon Wood, 366-74)

24
Concerns about moral citizensexample 1 Alexis
de Tocqueville discusses the role of religion
  • Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
    (1831), chapter XVII
  • The sects that exist in the United States are
    innumerable. They all differ in respect to the
    worship which is due to the Creator but they all
    agree in respect to the duties which are due from
    man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own
    peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same
    moral law in the name of God. If it be of the
    highest importance to man, as an individual, that
    his religion should be true, it is not so to
    society. Society has no future life to hope for
    or to fear and provided the citizens profess a
    religion, the peculiar tenets of that religion
    are of little importance to its interests.
    Moreover, all the sects of the United States are
    comprised within the great unity of Christianity,
    and Christian morality is everywhere the same.
  • It may fairly be believed that a certain number
    of Americans pursue a peculiar form of worship
    from habit more than from conviction. In the
    United States the sovereign authority is
    religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be
    common but there is no country in the world
    where the Christian religion retains a greater
    influence over the souls of men than in America
    and there can be no greater proof of its utility
    and of its conformity to human nature than that
    its influence is powerfully felt over the most
    enlightened and free nation of the earth.
  • I have remarked that the American clergy in
    general, without even excepting those who do not
    admit religious liberty, are all in favor of
    civil freedom but they do not support any
    particular political system. They keep aloof from
    parties and from public affairs. In the United
    States religion exercises but little influence
    upon the laws and upon the details of public
    opinion but it directs the customs of the
    community, and, by regulating domestic life, it
    regulates the state.

25
Concerns about moral citizensexample 2
Catharine Beecher discusses womens role in a
democracy
  • Catharine E. Beecher, A Treatise On Domestic
    Economy (1843)
  • ...The success of democratic institutions, as
    is conceded by all, depends upon the intellectual
    and moral character of the mass of the people. If
    they are intelligent and virtuous, democracy is a
    blessing but if they are ignorant and wicked, it
    is only a curse, and as much more dreadful than
    any other form of civil government, as a thousand
    tyrants are more to be dreaded than one. It is
    equally conceded, that the formation of the moral
    and intellectual character of the young is
    committed mainly to the female hand. The mother
    forms the character of the future man the sister
    bends the fibres that are hereafter to be the
    forest tree the wife sways the heart, whose
    energies may turn for good or for evil the
    destinies of a nation. Let the women of a country
    be made virtuous and intelligent, and the men
    will certainly be the same. The proper education
    of a man decides the welfare of an individual
    but educate a woman, and the interests of a whole
    family are secured.
  • If this be so, as none will deny, then to
    American women, more than to any others on earth,
    is committed the exalted privilege of extending
    over the world those blessed influences, which
    are to renovate degraded man, and "clothe all
    climes with beauty."

26
institutional proliferation the camp
meetingsource P.S. Duval, ca. 1801, from Joseph
Smith, Old Redstone
27
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

28
Focus question 4 How did these issues carry
forward into the late 20th century?
  • key concept
  • Religion in the late 20th century. The first
    three issues discussed in todays
    presentationthe marketplace of ideas individual
    autonomy and religious diversity and concerns
    about moralitycarry forward into the late 20th
    century. We can see these issues in Supreme
    Court decisions about the role of religion in
    primary and secondary schools.

29
American religious diversity the eight leading
church bodies in the United States by County,
2000 (measures church membership, not belief)

30
the marketplace of religion
  • Long Beach, 2008
  • Long Beach, 2010

31
Religion in the schools
  • Establishment cases? 1960s-90s
  • - Engele v. Vitale (1962)
  • - Abington School District v. Schempp (1963)
  • - Wallace v. Jaffree (1985)
  • - Lee v. Weisman (1992)
  • Free exercise cases?1980s/00s
  • - Westside Community Board of Ed. v. Mergens
    (1990)
  • - Rosenberger v. Rector Visitors of UVA (1995)
  • - Good News Club v. Milford Central School
    (2001)

32
Primary Sources on the webDivining America
http//www.nhc.rtp.nc.us/tserve/divam.htmReligio
n and the Founding of the American Republic
http//lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/African
American Odyssey http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaoh
tml/exhibit/aointro.html Selected secondary
sourcesPatricia 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).
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