The Marketplace of Religion in the British Colonies

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The Marketplace of Religion in the British
Colonies Early Republic Eileen Luhr
eluhr_at_csulb.edu
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• 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?

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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.

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Three 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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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)

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Example 1 The Marketplace of Religion in
VirginiaChrist 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?
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Interior and pulpit of Christ Church- Where is
the pulpit? Where do members sit?- what does
this say about the church members beliefs?
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Religion in Virginia after the First Great
AwakeningSouth 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?
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Example 2 The Marketplace of Religion in New
York New York, 1730
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The Marketplace of Religion in New York New
York, 1771
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Example 3 George Whitefield, itinerant
evangelist trafficking in the Lord (Lambert,
127)
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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.

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Focus question 2How 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 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 the 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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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.

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Focus question 3How 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 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 (366-74)

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

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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

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

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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).