New England Dissent, 1630-1833: The Baptists and the Separation of Church and State. 2 vols. By William G. McLoughlin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. 1,324 pp. $35.00

Modern studies of church and state in America have begun to modify some older conclusions. Much attention has been given to the Constitutional “solution” of separation and its contradictions and problems in practice. Similarly, church historians, qualifying an older assumption that conservative churches ultimately shed the forms of “classic Protestantism” and permitted American religion to be shaped by the sectarian heritage of the radical Reformation, have begun to re-examine the background of ideas. This re-examination is urgently needed in treating America's last disestablishment contest, the struggle over the state churches in New England which raged until the 1820's. For this struggle had unusual significance.

Download Full-text

person’s use of the Bible as the most important religious authority was implicitly to devalue the elaborate edifices protecting scriptural interpretation that prevailed in all the historic European churches, Protestant as well as Catholic. The institutions compromised by such logic included established churches defined as authoritative communicators of divine grace through word and sacrament, institutions of higher learning monopolized by the establishment in order to protect intellectual activity from religious as well as rational error, and the monarchy as the primary fount of godly social stabil-ity. British Protestant Dissent moved somewhat more cautiously in this direction. But even after the rise of Methodism and the reinvigoration of the older Dissenting traditions, the strength of evangelicalism among British establishmentarians never permitted the kind of thoroughly voluntaristic ecclesiology that prevailed in the United States. On questions of establishment, post-Revolutionary American evangeli-calism marked a distinct development from the colonial period when the most important evangelical leaders had spoken with opposing voices. Some, like Charles Wesley, whose hymns were being used in America from the 1740s, remained fervent defenders of the status quo. Some, like George Whitefield, gave up establishment in practice but without ever addressing the social implications of such a move and without being troubled by occa-sional relapses into establishmentarian behaviour. Some, like the Baptists in America from the 1750s, renounced establishment with a vengeance and became ardent proponents of disestablishment across the board. Some, like the American Presbyterian Gilbert Tennent, eagerly threw establishment away in the enthusiasm of revival, only later to attempt a partial recovery after enthusiasm cooled. Some, like John Wesley, gave up establishment instincts reluctantly, even while promoting religious practices that others regarded as intensely hostile to establishment. Some, like Francis Asbury, the leader of American Methodists, gave it up without apparent trauma. Many, like Jonathan Edwards and the leading evangelical laymen of the Revolutionary era – John Witherspoon, Patrick Henry and John Jay – never gave up the principle of establishment, even though they came to feel more spiritual kinship with evangelicals who attacked established churches (including their own) than they did with many of their fellow establishmen-tarian Protestant colleagues who did not embrace evangelicalism. By the late 1780s, except in New England, this mixed attitude towards formal church and state ties had been transformed into a nearly unanimous embrace of disestablishment. Even in Connecticut and Massachusetts, where evangelical support of the Congregational establishments could still be found, the tide was running strongly away from mere toleration towards full religious liberty. Methodism was an especially interesting variety of evangelicalism since its connectional system retained characteristics of an establishment (especially the human authority of Wesley, or the bishops who succeeded Wesley). But

The Rise of the Laity in Evangelical Protestantism ◽

10.4324/9780203166505-77 ◽

2003 ◽

pp. 160-161

Keyword(s):

New England ◽

Church And State ◽

The United States ◽

Partial Recovery ◽

Revolutionary Era ◽

Scriptural Interpretation ◽

The Bible ◽

Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽

The Status ◽

George Whitefield

Download Full-text

Introduction

New England Women Writers, Secularity, and the Federalist Politics of Church and State ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198864950.003.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-31

Author(s):

Gretchen Murphy

Keyword(s):

New England ◽

Early Republic ◽

Church And State ◽

Partisan Politics ◽

Women Authors ◽

Judith Sargent Murray ◽

Autobiographical Fiction ◽

Lydia Sigourney ◽

Protestant Christianity ◽

Democratic Life

Beginning with a discussion of partisan politics in Catharine Sedgwick’s juvenile letters and her autobiographical fiction, the introduction makes a case for considering five prominent New England women authors (Sedgwick, Judith Sargent Murray, Sally Sayward Wood, Lydia Sigourney, and Harriet Beecher Stowe) as profoundly influenced by and invested in a Federalist understanding of religion in a republic. This investment, which treats Protestant Christianity as a force necessary for public morality in democratic life, shaped their writing careers and forms an unacknowledged contribution to political and religious debates about church and state in the early republic and nineteenth century. Situating this argument as a contribution to scholarship in literary studies, postsecular studies, and political history, the introduction explains contributions to each area.

Download Full-text