Tuesday, December 1, 2009
February 19: "Religious Revivals and the Second Great Awakening"
What do you make of religion's place in the early republic in terms of empowering the individual? How did politics reflect/co-opt Americans' religiousity or commitments to morality (note Abzug's analysis of Northern revivals versus Snay's work on Southern religion and its evolution toward defending slavery)?
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Religion in the early republic seems to mirror many other identities of Americans in the early republic, especially in the west and backcountry. The revivals and spread of many evangelical denominations constitute a rebellion and an assertion of democratic independence: both very American themes. The very nature of Protestantism is consistent with Americanism, and this second great awakening takes Protestantism to its most extreme, evangelicalism.
ReplyDeleteWith evangelicalism, the individual and individual alone is responsible for his or her salvation. He or she only needs to read the bible and use his or her own head to determine what he or she believes. This is incredible significant to the nature of empowering the individual. If a person is soley responsible for his or her own salvation, why isn’t he or she soley responsible and accountable for other aspects of life? If God says that the individual can acquire salvation individually, then surely all of life can be accomplished with the same vigorous sense of individuality.
Additionally, the nature of the west and backcountry makes individuality even more glaring. People came from all over and from all different backgrounds. Given the fact that there was very little in the area before them at the time, they were allowed to take their different backgrounds and keep them. There was nothing that they had to assimilate to. In the east they had to play by the rules of others, but in the west, they made their own rules. This phenomenon plays hand in hand with the essence of evangelical Protestantism.
Finally, the American system of democratic republicanism encouraged the individualism that sprung out of the second great awakening in the early republic. Individual voices could be heard, and those individual voices had every right to individual thought. Without a culture or political structure silencing individual voices, the individualism that came from evangelicalism and the independent nature of the west and backcountry was able to flourish freely and openly, and it certainly did.
Religion, as it does today, played a strong part in influencing politics of the early republic. Abzug writes of the northern revivals of the 1820s and the individuality that came with it. Young people especially found themselves empowered against older generations of repression that had left many before downtrodden. This is completely consistent with Andrew Jackson’s democratic successes in that decade. The common person is able find salvation himself, therefore the common person is worthy of appropriate say within government. Religion affected morality. The morally looser country of the Revolutionary era tightened up some, and such a moral tightening was reflected in politics. This trend will continue throughout the rest of that century, and indeed all the way to today in some political circles. The combination of strict moral virtues with deference to individuality and common man sentiments is every effective politically.
The Snay article about religion in the South is also relevant in an evaluation of religion’s impact upon politics. In specific regards to slavery, Protestantism and evangelicalism defined a paternalistic nature of masters over their slaves. The masters were doing Godly work by looking after the inferior slaves much as a father looks after a young and ignorant child. This mentality, combined with “scriptural justification” of slavery found in the old testament made religion a very strong force in terms of defending southern slavery.
As the country expanded westward, the seeming wildness of the land appears to have influenced the diversity of the religious thought. As Thomas Jefferson puts forth in his bill for the Virginia Assembly, both the state and federal governments of the Early Republic (although made up almost entirely of deeply protestant Christian white men) were eager to take up legislation that secured and encouraged a diversity of religious experiences in the new nation. Source two illustrates the budding religious fervor that swept the western areas of the country. Free from the constraints of entrenched religious interests, the west provided a fertile ground for the blooming Awakening. In testament to the Awakening’s strength and vigor, source three chronicles a revival at Yale University. The experience was so powerful, per Reverend Noah Porter, that the students retained their newfound zealotude throughout their visits home.
ReplyDeleteIn western New York state, the reformist preacher Charles Grandison Finney raged against the sinners which had spread so pervasively (in his view) throughout the religious establishment. Source four excerpts one of Finney’s many sermons in which he pleads with the numerous sinners in his audience to renounce their selfish worldly affections and commit themselves to God’s path for them. Finney is a central figure in Robert H. Abzug’s essay in which he explores the “Northern Revival”, specifically the ways in which Finney attacks the established Presbyterian Church and its proponents.
The new evangelical movements also had a political thrust to them as well. The message of fighting against the established order carried great appeal with the many immigrants getting off the boats in New York and Boston. Source five is a political poster from New York City which blends the elements of evangelical revivalism and political campaigning.
The final three sources shed light on some of the ramifications for minorities during the Second Great Awakening. Source six details the founding of the first African America Church in the United States. From Richard Allen’s narrative it is clear that the conditions for blacks in segregated churches in the north were hardly free from overt racism. Source seven gives a perspective of the role of women as it was interpreted by many during this time. A.J. Graves believed the Bible supported the idea that a woman’s place was in the home, as an anchor or waiting treasure for the man who must brave the perils of the cruel unfair world. Finally, the rise of a number of religious minorities was fueled by the Second Great Awakening. Source eight provides us with a written account of Joseph Smith’s first visions that lead to the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Smith also used the religious fervor and freedom of western upstate New York to find listening ears for his messages.
Robert H. Abzug’s essay explores the rise of Charles Grandison Finney’s message and how it conflicted with the beliefs of conservative, established Presbyterianism. Finney’s supporters were often younger people who were burnt out on the tyrannical sermonizing of church services and saw no hope of salvation. Finney brought a new message, to new (young) people, in a new land (western New York). All of these factors resulted in a potent new religious revival.
Elizabeth B. Clark’s article depicts the rise of anti-slavery publications and rhetoric in the 1830s and 40s and how this abolitionist push found solid a foundation in evangelical principles. Clark’s essay traces the theological debates that cropped up that were meant to provoke abolitionist debates on how Christianity meshed with slavery.
ReplyDeleteLastly, Mitchell Snay dives into the minds of southern intellectuals and how they attempted to defend slavery against these new attacks upon it from the north. Southerners needed to feel as if they had some religious intellectual backing for their institution in the face of fresh attacks. Men like James Henley Thornwell were more than willing to provide the writings to foster Southerners’ shared security. Thornwell drew on the principles of relationships that ran throughout Scottish Enlightenment thinking and the separation between body and consciousness/ acts and thoughts to mark where the essence of humanity lied. That is to say, in the latter over which Southerners argued masters had no control over their slaves and not the former over which masters exercised near complete control.
The individualism undergirding the religious revivals was an outgrowth of Republicanism and a perceived control over one’s own destiny. We talked in class about the massive movement of people both into and especially within the United States to the cities and the Western Frontier, out of the home and into factories and onto new land. While the Early Republic was far from an egalitarian paradise it was superior to anything that existed in Europe and especially Britain. The feelings of control and progress these changes engendered, coupled with the Republican experiment and its successes in both holding back British domination in the War of 1812 and attaining a fairly high education level for the time (75% literacy was the figure given in class) made a re-ordering of old ideas almost inevitable among the young and very diverse population of the United States.
ReplyDeleteThe effect that divisions had on the revivals was touched upon by Abzus, who explained that the millennial nature of the revivals in Western New York, in which dualistic and eschatological immediacy intertwined to form a reaction against old Presbyterianism. While the “old guard”, old in ideas and age preferred a structured setting with quiet and hierarchy, the young revivalists saw a world or black and white, with or against us, and approached their beliefs with utmost urgency. In a Republic so young and so rapidly on the move socially (both up and down) and physically, an ideology necessitating rapid progress toward something seems inevitable, while in which malaise and hierarchy was more suited to a slow, old, established order like those in Europe. In a sense, what was thought of as the American Spirit was making its way into theology through the religious revivals.
The revival of religions was more a realignment of old ideas into new modes of thinking, and this is clearly evident with the divergence of pro-slavery and anti-slavery revivals (not surprisingly, Northern and Southern respectively). Clark makes the argument that the focus on the individual and their spirituality led to a more Humanist interpretation of religion, one in which suffering was delinked from piety in place of devotion and morality. This decoupling cast the suffering of slaves in a new light, since suffering was no longer intricately linked to the religious experience. Benevolence was God’s modus operandi, not punitive retribution for sins and sinners, and enslaving fellow humans could hardly be thought of as benevolent or humanistic. It is not surprising that this humanistic, “Liberal Protestantism” arose in the North as opposed to the South, since the economy here was shifting towards production and labor and the labor of slaves was not necessary to economic viability.
The opposite was true in the South, where a majority of people remained subsistence farmers and the plantation economy depended heavily on slave labor. Snay argues that Southern religiosity took some sort of legalistic track in which the way people relate to each other is emphasized, duty is paramount and evidently ownership of a person’s labor constituted merely another obligation to be fulfilled, and not the slaves body, will or conscience. I must admit this interpretation is very bizarre; it almost appears that Southern Revivalists read the Northerner’s notes and created distinctions between the “person”, mind and body, and their obligations as if they existed in different spheres, thereby eliminating the argument that slavery was cruel. Slaves owned body and mind, only their work was appropriated, and since duty was a religious imperative there was nothing wrong.
Religion in the early republic provided a medium for individuals to channel their inner feelings and beliefs in order to find one’s salvation. With the coming of the Second Great Awakening, preachers such as Charles Grandison Finney preached that salvation lied in the self. One was responsible for his or her own interpretation of the Bible and through their interpretation find their own salvation. No longer did salvation lie in rituals such as offerings or “chosen” people of God, all individuals regardless of class were able to obtain eternal life. This newly found belief gave confidence and hope to previously desolate men and women, and they used this new hope to extend their vigor to other spheres of life.
ReplyDeleteAs the concept of Manifest Destiny became a reality and the country moved westward, so to did this idea of self-salvation. Settlers had a clean slate to work with out west and could establish their own social norms and religious tradition. This religious diversity is backed by the government under Thomas Jefferson who instituted a bill that enabled legislation to stimulate the undertaking of a wide array of religious experiences in the early republic. Religions place in the new West was dominant, because of the opportunity the region offered for a new start, perfectly fitting the term “Awakening.” The new constitution with individual rights enumerated also played a role in this Awakening in areas of western territories; individuals had the right of free speech, religion, ect… and therefore could establish and practice new faiths.
The lines between religiosity and morality were often blurred by citizens living in the North and the South, especially the issue of slavery. In Abzug’s essay he uses the preaching of Charles Finney to convey the point of individualism. What group took off with this new sense of the individual being empowered? Well of course it was the youth who were immediately deemed “villains” by disgruntled Old Lights in New England. The democratic republican nature and concept of individual liberty reflected these religious changes. As Abzug notes, “there were few socially instituted signs that one could any longer use a yardstick for holiness.” Social hierarchies had been flattened by the new political and religious order ushered in by the Second Great Awakening.
Religion in the south was different in the sense that southern preachers used the bible to justify slavery, while in the north slavery was viewed as an inherent sin. In his essay, Snay notes that southern preachers justified slavery by depicting it as a mutual bond. The slave and slaveholder exchanged services to appease one another according to these irrational “men of god.” The justification of slavery stood on the ground of the possession of one’s own conscience according to Thornwell. Since the slaveholder could not “own” a slave’s conscience the slave was therefore “free” but the obligation of labor was “determined by the Providence of God.” The politics of both the North and the South are vividly reflected in the religious sentiments of each region.
The great religious revival of the early Republic could be indeed seen as a rebellion of sorts. Americans were very accustomed to rebellion at that time especially following the Revolution. As westward expansion began to grow in the early 1800’s so did religion. Thomas Jefferson successfully secured religious freedom for the nation. This gave way to new thoughts and expressions of the individual. Now along with the Bill of Rights, Americans really did not have much to worry about in terms of expressing their individualistic ideas on anything they wanted to. With this Great Awakening taking place around the country, many different versions of Christianity began popping up. Because the country was expanding west, the people that were going were of all different backgrounds and nationalities this providing for a very broad pool of beliefs. With these broad groups of people things called Camp Meetings began to spring up. Preachers would come and preach the fiery wrath of the Devil and what would happen to you if you were not saved. This could be seen as almost scaring people into a belief. On the other side some preachers preached the power of choice and that it was the individual and the individual alone that was responsible for their salvation. They were told to read the bible and make their own decision on their beliefs. The freedom of this choice in religion was extremely empowering to the individual. If these people were immigrants or even second generation Americans if they were devout to their church, may have not thought they had the choice to deiced what they believed in. They the individual could now make all their own decisions pertaining to salvation without being banned from a church. The people where given a voice and thus they would also learn that this voice could be used in government decisions as well. In Abzug’s analysis of Northern revivals he covers the widespread views of the churches in the north. Many churches were not ready to accept a change and thus tried to resist it with everything they had. Finney was an extremely important person to the changing world of religion in the North. One of the biggest ideas that grabbed hold in the north was that the person could find salvation for himself or herself. The preacher did not have to bless you with salvation or tell you, you were saved anymore. You could make that decision for yourself. The Puritans were probably rolling over in their graves hearing that there was no predestination. It was morally right for the individual to make his or her own choice about salvation. The politics of the church in the north especially the Presbyterian clergy were not the most ecstatic people about this. They worried that it was to big of a change and that everyone would go to hell. In Snay’s essay, he deals with the issue of slavery and morality. The south had become so set in its ways and how it functioned by the time of the Civil War that even the preachers had to find ways to protect the society of the Antebellum south. Thornwell argued that slavery was the “obligation of labor for another, determined by the Providence of God, independently of the provisions of a contract.” In short he means that the master did not own the man himself but owed the labor that the man produces. The preachers in the south argued that God sanctioned slavery, and that slaves “services to masters are duties to which they owe God.” This was the beginning of the evangelical impulse to Christianize all of slavery. These ideas shaped the southern society up to the civil war and even after. These different views on religion and slavery between the north and the south showed that even decades before the civil war that there were already stark contrasting differences of beliefs in America.
ReplyDeleteThe social and economic restraints on the population of the early republic made this movement of religious revivalism possible to spread throughout the country. The differences in geography made the argument for different sides of morality. People were connected through different means of survival within one nation of law. The ambiguity of morality at this time was bound to have a religious reaction to the state of living at the time. According to Snay, the growing moral movements were testing the legitimacy of slavery. Southern evangelicals were then forced to defend their way of life, and that of slavery. Justifications grew as to how slavery was moral and an obligations between slave and master. It wasn't the person that was owned it was his labor. This doesn't seem like a just cause by any means. This still means that the person is owned. This push for personal salvation just took the heat off of slave holders for the time being. They could just justify that it was natural for the master to own a slave's labor. That the soul was of course God's and the master could not own the soul, oh no. But to own his labor was perfectly okay and it was the slave's religious duty to repent and find salvation. Abzug focuses on how northern evangelicals spread their word and movement in the North. A major reason for the spreading of this religious movement I feel was the reaction to the acknowledgment of the conscience during a time of slavery. People were latching onto ideas of personal salvation to escape the hardships of dealing with life in the early republic. Although this was a time for a new nation to begin claiming its stake in the future, it was unable to satisfy the everyday spiritual stresses of living during this time. I can absolutely see how someone like Finney could go across the country and "ooo and ahh" people into running into a church. The same tactic was used in the medieval periods by making churches intimidating and frightening to the people on the outside and once they got in, the stained glass and beautiful architecture made people subconsciously feel safe and secure. This same type of "sales pitch" could be used of people in a market/slave society where they weren't feeling very inspired to be alive. If I was apart of this society, working hard jobs, hard hours, spending most of my time away from my family, where before the market, most time was spent with the family working on the farm or in the town, I could see how someone telling me about my personal salvation with the Lord would seem appealing. If I really hated my job enough I could also see the appeal to join groups of people to spread this word. I can also see the general public being pulled into this movement easily mostly based off of how most general populations act as a whole. One person to come and act as a shepherd is not a hard thing to do amidst a population of struggling people.
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ReplyDeleteAmerica in the early to mid 1800s was growing westward at an exponential rate. This expansion into the western parts of the original states and into the old northwest gave rise to new religious experiments. The old regime was losing its foothold on the new territory. People were searching for something different and at first they found that with Presbyterianism and then as we come into the 1820s and 1830s, some become extremists. With Calvinist culture dying, new sects rose that centered around God as a benevolent Father. Abzug calls this a spiritual confusion and I think that is probably the best term to describe what was going on. Blacks were becoming American as much to the slaveholders and anti-abolitionists chagrin. And to be American at the time was to be a Christian (and maybe Jewish if you lived in a city). Blacks were embracing the idea of Christianity very rapidly as evidenced by the pious Richard Allen and his determination that God would help him found his church. From document six, it sounds like Allen and other black people in his community were kicked out of a local Episcopal church just due to them being black. (This doesn’t sound like being very Christian to me) Instead of accepting what was handed to him, Allen pressed on and with the help of one of our country’s founders, Benjamin Rush, he was able to establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1793. All of us Southerners should be familiar with the AME churches as they are sprinkled throughout the Southeastern part of our country. This document impressed me the most because it invoked the most sympathy for a people that whites would not even let worship freely (which seems so contradictory of the religion). I also found document seven referring to a religious justification for the Cult of Domesticity where it says “The woman should regard home as her appropriate domain is not the dictate of religion, but of enlightened human reason.” Wow! But Graves goes on to say “let man…retain proud supremacy in the world’s dominion.” Not much more to explain there about how he felt about women. It doesn’t sound much like enlightened reason to me though. A good example of the new religious fanaticism developing during the 2nd Great Awakening was in document 8 concerning the Mormon founder Joseph Smith recounting his vision of God. In order not to offend anybody, I would prefer not to state my full opinions on the Joseph Smith document (or any other later Christian documents and sects for that matter), but what I do see is a person who is unsatisfied with the way religion is run and structured. Thanks to people like Smith and many others in the 2nd Great Awakening, a new thought and mindset began to take hold in the North. People in the industrious North began specialization much earlier than the agricultural South did. Since that specialization happened there was a demand for more educated people which meant that people began to think critically and start to question the old order. Some of these encouraged the growth of new Christian sects that viewed God in a different light. And also, more importantly, they began to become critical of the viewpoint of pain and suffering as Clark explains in her essay. She states that these new views were “delegitimizing the ‘right’ to private violence,” which became a movement toward ABOLITION (and eventually better treatment of women). Ultimately the 2nd Great Awakening not only opened the spiritual eyes of early republic critical thinkers, but it spurred on the thought that maybe slavery goes against Christian principles. The abolition movement spread like wildfire as people began to “awaken” to the ills of human bondage. That is the outcome for American history in the 2nd Great Awakening.
ReplyDeleteDuring the early republic according to some sources, the religious revival that came about uplifted the human body and spirit. The religious revival changed to where the perception of God was that of a “benevolent” deity instead of a “sovereign judge”. That view can be seen in the documents of the camp meeting and the religious awakening in Yale. At the camp meeting, the participants are seen as being reborn and changing from the sinners into a more pious life through prayer. This contradicts the previous notion further north from the Calvinist preachers. The same is seen in the Yale revival. People after a series of prayer are swept up into a more pious attitude. This is assigned with the devotion to God and is in difference of the more strict religions. So through these examples, the human experience is more prevalent and people can focus on the issue of humanity in the present time rather then looking to an eternity in fire and brimstone. This experience of the importance of the human body and spirit of revival differs somewhat from the revivals taking place in New York with Finney. Finney beliefs seem to be more zealous then the author Clark showed in her essay. Finney shows a zealous look at sinners in the world. Abzug, in his essay, shows Finney revival as a more fire and brimstone where if a person did not follow his beliefs or perceptions on religion then the person would basically burn in the afterlife. This revival mixes the perceptions of Calvinism with a more liberal perception of Christianity.
ReplyDeleteClark’s essay shows views in the north that tended toward more liberal ideas on Christianity as well as slavery. In the north, the liberal views on religion or more specifically God as an individual was more benevolent and kind. The north shaped the religion toward a direction were humanity should be revolted by cruelty. This view on religion or at least humanity provided a backdrop for abolitionist to form. With the new view of anti-cruelty, abolitionists would supply that no man should be forced to endure such actions against them. In Snay’s essay, he supply’s that in the south a similar view is shared by southerners but in a differing way. He concludes that during the time a prominent figure James Henry Thornwell provided a look that supported humanity and slavery at the same time. This view fueled southern support of slavery. Thornwell provides that as long as the master and slave relation is like a father and son it is okay. Also it is viewed that God but the labor of the slave in the master’s hands so that he can profit. It is an extremely flawed look at slavery. Sad to say it fueled the southern propaganda on slavery. Most of the north probably would not have been swayed by the argument but it was most likely directed to the various southern slave owners to “ease” their conscious or at least make it “ok”. At the time, it looks like the revival of human spirit is taking hold in both northern and southern states. However, one view supports abolition while the other is made into a support for slavery.
In the early republic, religion was the one thing that most Americans believed they had absolute control over. The themes throughout most of the revivals in the time period empowered the individual--not in his surroundings in the physical world, but the afterlife. With the majority of Americans feeling that they had the ability to control their eternal resting place, it is no surprise that the idea of the individual was further empowered in America.
ReplyDeletePossibly as politics and religion have always done, the two realms of belief reflected one another from region to region. According to Robert H. Abzug's "Northern Revivalism," the more socially conservative Northern states maintained institutions which aimed to protect the "social peace, learning, tranquility, Christian humility, and respect for the sex and age hierarchies of a God-given natural order" (164). Tranquility seemed to be the key word, as the third diarist source document describes the "Religious Awakening" at Yale in 1802. He then delineates how they quietly went to a room and prayed. After time, more people were praying and in the end it seemed absolutely boring compared to the Southern revivals.
One participant in Kentucky described it as a "whirlwind" that traveled around and affected people. Liberal worship and praise was characteristic of congregations. The witness described them as to "fall down, cry out, tremble, and not unfrequently are affected with convulsive twitchings." With politicians like Thomas Jefferson calling for a separation of Church and State, it would seem that many in the South were all show but nothing more. According to Snay, in "The Southern Clergy and the Sanctification of Slavery," many pastors found themselves being pressured into rationalizing slavery in their sermons. Through most new-age moral philosophy, many pastors were able to create a faux-logical argument on the behalf of slavery in a moral realm. Since many of the pastors of the South also packed the universities nearby as well, this set a foundation for the philosophy to be maintained in a religious sense throughout the South.
At the same time, a similar situation was occurring between the east--west dynamic. According to Snay, with the more established eastern churches having their conservative ways set, expansion westward proved to give breathing room to new cults and sects of the Christian faith. Groups like the Shakers, Cambellites, Unitarianism, and Mormonism all found it more comfortable to be far away from the orthodox ways of the Presbyterian churches eastward.
As the introduction to this section says, “disestablishment clearly had little effect on religious intensity.” One could even say that the fact that the United States did not have an established religion set the stage for an era of religious growth and change, especially as more Americans began to move west. With new communities sprouting up everywhere, it’s not surprising that there was competition between the major religious groups, resulting in the formation of new splinter religions, as well as some entirely new “radical” religion sects such as Mormonism. In Jefferson’s defense of freedom of religion, he espouses the argument that freedom of religion mirrors the God-given right of free will, which in keeping with his affinity for Enlightenment philosophy, Jefferson says is based on reason and rational thought; thus, he believes that all rational men would espouse his own religious beliefs, knowing that his opinions are safe from persecution from dissenters. Indeed, the second primary document shows that religion became a very personal emotional experience for many at revivals. Instead of traditional religious dogma that often took a cold and distant view of God, the Second Great Awakening provided for a more personalized experience with a more “benevolent” God. This freedom of religion allowed for the formation of churches to fill specific needs, such as Richard Allen’s founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; just as the first Europeans to come to the continent did so to flee religious persecution and begin their own churches, so did the new settlers who moved out west. Another interesting point from the readings centers on the fact that “freedom of religion” is not synonymous with “freedom from Christianity.” Even though Christianity was not the established religion (nor was there one), it seems to be taken as a given that all good citizens would subscribe to some form of traditional Christianity. Finney’s sermon illustrates that point well, as he says, “keeping yourself away from the gospel,” not attending church, and not reading the Bible would be “fatal” for one’s soul, an idea that does not seem to be accepting of alternate religions. As such, Christianity was often used as a political barometer. For example, A.J. Graves wrote prolifically about the domestic sphere for women, which was “the station which God and nature have assigned to her,” a stance that would solidify traditional gender roles in the early republic. As Clark writes, religion was used to expand humanist philosophies, challenging the traditional belief that pain and suffering brought one closer to God. This Christian humanism eventually stood in stark contrast to those religious leaders who believed that slavery was justifiable through the Bible. However, in some regions of the north, religion inspired young men and women to “militancy” against the older, more corrupt members of the church. Younger Christians felt betrayed by the church and closed in by its strict dogma. Their religious deviance from traditional religious realms was physically manifested in the move of such revival movements out west.
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ReplyDeleteThe starkest example of religion being used to justify a political position occurred in the south in the defense of slavery. While Clark writes about the abolitionists who used the Bible to condemn slavery, Snay writes that church leaders in the south found support for their position in the same place. Southern ministers such as Thornwell believed in the “mutual responsibility” between master and slave, that both actors were moral beings with consciences. To justify their position, pro-slavery Christians argued that masters were bound by Scripture to treat their slaves fairly; Thornwell even goes so far as to say that they should be given “what is just and equal.” Certainly great men of the Bible had slaves, but it was argued that they treated them fairly, and they were not punished by God for having them. However, Snay mentions the “ambiguity” of the southern religious leaders’ position on slavery. On the one hand, theologians prided themselves on being intellectuals as well as religious leaders, and thus they would have been exposed to much of the humanist and rational philosophy espoused by leaders like Jefferson. On the other hand, they were under immense social pressure from the general populace in the south, whose economy was based almost entirely on slavery’s role in agriculture. If religious leaders had come out in strong numbers against slavery, the region would have been in social chaos and may have erupted in the same kind of religious militancy as was seen in the north. The religious leaders, being rational men, almost had no choice but to go along with popular opinion at the time both to preserve their own interests and keep peace in the region. Thus, while religion was not officially affiliated with politics, politics played a very decisive role in the religious thought of the period.
Religion to me seemed to play a revolutionary role in the early republic. Religion and its practice and role in society were being changed from a more reserved and internal practice to one that is becoming more vocalized and public in the beginning of the nineteenth-century. Individuals could now, it seems, make public their anxieties and reservations their faith placed on their conscious. The economic changes brought about by industrialization and the ramping up of political and moral rhetoric also led many individuals to seek answer in this rapidly changing era. For abolitionists, religion served as a medium for the moral and ethical advocacy of anti-slavery. By reverting to biblical text, abolitionists could decry the unethical and inhumane treatment of the enslaved. Likewise, proslavery advocates used the same texts as justification of their actions. Slaves also were able to view religion as a means of escape from persecution and exclusion.
ReplyDeleteThe expanding frontier and the changing economic landscape resulted in many young individuals to have anxieties over their spiritual wellbeing. This led many to seek alternatives to the established, highly rigid institutions of religion existing in the early republic in the early nineteenth-century. Having such a large pool of potential converts to draw from, individuals like Finney were able to firebrand their way into prominence with promises of salvation and Providence. These same young people, growing up in such a turbulent time, probably did not have the same reservations about religious expression as did the older generations. The ever-expanding western borders of the United States led to the creation of smaller more independent communities that were not tied and divided by tradition religious, economic, and political traditions. The great demographic and socioeconomic diversity of these areas allowed for experimentation in the realm of religion. A bandwagon effect might have also had a significant effect on the expanding influence of such revolutionary notions on religion. Most importantly, religion served as a means of communication between groups of people, spiritual guidance for those in need, and a mechanism for advocacy for various groups.
Morality had a great influence on politics in the early republic, and vice versa. As per Robert Abzug’s essay Northern Revivalism, a changing sense of morality in the north led to a moral questioning of what is the correct version and role religion should play in a person’s life. Reformists to the status quo like Charles Finney and Nathan Beman saw the Presbyterian Church as unable to provide salvation to its adherents and preached a break with traditional views. Similarly, Elizabeth Clark sees the resumption of anti-slavery advocacy as a change in views on morality, cruelty, and religion. She maintains that “Protestant Reformers took most of the joy out of suffering”, and that by the 1830s, many Americans “turned for guidance to the emotions over the intellect, identifying the moral sense more with feeling than with rational thought”. This reformation of the views of morality helped the abolitionists greatly by placing the abhorrent and cruel treatment of slaves into the realm of the unacceptable and unjust.
ReplyDeleteWhile northerners used morality to advocate for a change in the way Americans should practice religion and decry the unethical treatment of slaves, southern intellectuals and clergymen used it to support the institution of slavery. The southern proslavery advocates turned to the writings of the Bible to justify the continuation of slavery. According to Snay, Scottish Common Sense Realism played a pivotal role in the southern defense of the institution of slavery. By converting the argument from one of a denial of human rights to one of a master-servant relationship of mutual obligation between morally responsible beings, proslavery advocates in the South were able to use morality to justify their actions. The South was committed to slavery and its continued existence; they could not exchange it for idealized notions of human morality because their economic and political livelihoods were built on generations of slavery.
People have commonly referred to the United States as a Christian nation. Indeed, religious terminology, morals, and principles can be found in American legal documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, as well as in the personal writings and correspondences of the Founding Fathers who laboriously debated what shape the country should take in the future. In Thomas Jefferson’s A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, he asserted 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 no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities” (Wilentz 148). Legally granting religious freedom to Americans in the nation’s new federal and state constitutions undoubtedly went a long way in terms of empowering individuals in the early republic.
ReplyDeleteSo, when religious awakenings sprung out across the country during the early half of the nineteenth century, people seemed to lose all of their preconceived fears about speaking publicly about their beliefs and joining with others to celebrate their faith. For example, during one religious awakening at Yale in 1802, an observer wrote that, “Some who, not knowing that there were any to sympathize with them, had concealed their convictions, were now encouraged to speak out, and others, anxious to share in the blessing” (Wilentz 149). Thus, as soon as a few people found the courage to share their religious experiences, they were joined by numerous others who knew that they could speak freely and act freely in accordance with their beliefs without facing any kind of punishment or interference from authority. As with the first Great Awakening in America, this movement gave the populace a strong voice that the government could not censor. In another instance, during a sermon, Charles Grandison Finney preached, “Sinner! Instead of waiting and praying for God to change your heart, you should at once summon up your powers, put forth the effort, and change the governing preference of your mind” (Wilentz 152). Sermons such as this called on listeners to take action and responsibility for themselves and suggested that they were in control of their own lives. Citizens of religious faith should not stand by passively and wait for God to bring change to their lives. Rather, individuals should actively grow closer to God and, if necessary, “change the governing preference of your mind.”
Mitchell Snay applies the influence of religion on society to the issue of slavery in the South. Abolitionists, who were typically motivated by their religious morals, argued that slavery denied individuals of their humanity and was fundamentally incompatible with the nation’s religious foundations. Southerners argued back, however, that “If a slave possessed a conscience, and this conscience could not be taken away or owned by another, then slavery could not divest its victims of their humanity because a slave never ceased to be human” (Wilentz 170). In this case, religion in the South became sanctification for (and in some areas also against) the institution of slavery and prolonged and intensified the divisions between the North and South.
One of the most important entities in the early republic was religion as religion played a vital role in all three of the Southern, Middle Atlantic, and the New England colonies even before America broke away from Great Britain and essentially became America. This first document, “Thomas Jefferson Codifies Religious Freedom, 1777, 1786” describes an “almighty god hath created mind free” demonstrating that T.J. believed that the freedom of religion and religious thought shall be tolerated in all parts of America. Not only does this document express the freedom of religion, but also T.J.’s account demonstrates how the ideals from the enlightenment and essentially the American Revolution translated to the way religion and religious thinking transpired in the early republic. This was an extremely empowering perspective because freedom of religion and religious thought meant American citizens could chose how they wanted to structure religion around their everyday lives and how their personal experiences with religion would shape the way they interpret and understand political, social, and economic aspects of American life.
ReplyDeleteAnother extremely interesting religious development in the early republic and through the Second Great Awakening can be seen in document 2, “A Participant Describes a Kentucky Camp Meeting, 1801.” This document effectively describes how a revival sermon actually occurred with “singing, and praying, and exhorting begins, the audience is thrown into what I call real disorder….Sinners dropping down on every hand, shrieking, groaning, crying for mercy, convulsed; professors praying, agonizing, fainting, falling down in distress.” This new form of worship was very common in all areas of the U.S. and embodies one of the major aspects of the Second Great Awakening along with the spread of numerous new religions. What is really interesting to note about the Second Great Awakening is that I believe the ideologies, practices, and principles from the Revolution were maintained during the Second Great Awakening. The enlightenment which so much of the American Revolution ideology can trace it’s roots back to stressed the importance of reason and improvement for all classes of society. With this Second Great Awakening I think people are starting to realize that they can practice and chose any type of religion the want to if in fact it helps them improve the way they live, think, and act and essentially their improvement would help out the nation in which they live in.
Historian Robert H. Abzug argues in his essay “Northern Revivalism” that “the changing realities of the new American nation far outpaced the ability of the old New England order to reproduce itself,” thus a new form of life, and life in the North revolved around religion, would take shape in form in order to adapt to the ever changes of the economic, social and societal America, this new form to shape in the Second Great Awakening, a nation wide religious revival that was not merely limited to one or two different forms of religion. Abzug also concentrates on the central figures in the Second Great Awakening such as Charles Gradison Finney and Nathan S. Beman. While Azbug concentrates on the revival of the North, historian Elizabeth B. Clark points out Southern revivalism in her essay “Religion, Cruelty, and Sympathy in Antebellum America.” Clark argues that “by the 1830s, many Americans turned for guidance to the emotions over the intellect, identifying the moral sense more with the feeling than with rational thought.” This became a central theme in the Second Great Awakening, that emotions and feelings in religion should outweigh the rationally thought and reason behind religious practice. This was extremely empowering to the individual because not every individual is intellectually aware enough to interpret the bible or any other religious aspects, but every human being has feelings and emotions and thus this new religious revivalism appealed to all Americans because emotions now carried the most weight in religious practice.
The turn of the century was a time of great movement for the people of the United States. As city folk leapt the Appalachian Mountains as if they were a hurdle, so also did they leave many of the constraints they felt from their old lives as well. This section dealt with the changing tide of religion in the frontier of America. What I found most poignant about this collection of readings was that the commentary on the separation between church and state was not viewed in this period as a negative thing. The measure was vigorously passed in Virginia at Jefferson’s behest. The expansion westward gave rise to an increase in protestant religious fervor. Speeches commonly known as “fire and brimstone sermons” were taught at frontier camp meetings. Preachers at these meetings warned participants that their salvation was their choice and told them to choose wisely because the devil was eager to pounce on them at the earliest opportunity. The African-American community was not immune to this rise of religious fervor, with leaders such as Benjamin Rush. Rush founded the African Methodist Episcopal in 1793. Slaves found comfort in religion during these difficult times, choosing to focus on an afterlife with less pain and suffering. Piety reigned supreme in all of these denominations. Parishioners were urged to incorporate God in every aspect of their lives and to flee from sin before it even had the chance to come in to one’s life.
ReplyDeletePeople in both the North and the South had different religious movements in this time period. One rather distasteful trend in the South was tailored for the wealthy slave owners who used the Bible to defend slavery. These men chose certain scriptures about obedience and told them to their slaves, giving the auspices of telling their slaves about God. In his essay, Snay relates how social pressures influenced the thoughts of these theologians in the South, which accounts for the different sentiments in the North. Sermons such as the one included from Reverend Finney displayed the militancy of the religious fervor in the North. Claiming that a lack of devotion would be “death to one’s soul” seemed to work in scaring people into attending church and reading their Bibles daily. Other groups used scripture to promote the cause of abolition. Though this movement was more common in the North, by 1830 there were abolition groups in every state (lecture).This rise in a humanist gospel encouraged followers to stomp out ills in society, such as slavery and poverty, such as the charity groups in Baltimore mentioned in Scraping By. Women rights did not receive any of this charitable thought. The idea of the “cult of domesticity” was resounded and encouraged women to be good, willing, and subservient to men. This section provided an interesting glance into the background of the American religious spectrum. What was most interesting was that it seemed as if the movements that rang most true with the reality of the Bible, such as a humanist reading and God’s love for the oppressed found in the AME church, have continued and remain in existence in the 21st century.
Religion in the early republic also underwent a sweeping and revolutionary change. It is true that religious attendance began to wane a generation earlier, but with the onset of the 2nd Great Awakening religious fervor was considered part of being American. The messages of this 2nd Great Awakening mirrored the rise of republican individualism in America. The preachers routinely suggested that through your own individual ability you could be saved from damnation. It could be argued that the rise of democracy lead to the success of the 2nd Great Awakening because both championed the individual to make his own decision.
ReplyDeleteThe 2nd Great Awakening also allowed for new religions to crop up, and allowed some African Americans to create a religion of their own. New religions like Mormonism cropped up during this time period. African Americans began to remake this new religious fervor into their own. The AME was founded during this time period that allowed black ministers to preach to a black congregation, in the North. The 2nd Great Awakening definitely gave the power to the individual to be saved, in contrast to the 1st Great Awakening that believed in the idea of predestination. The 2nd Great Awakening allowed the individual to accept God’s salvation and it triumphed the ability of the individual.
Both the North and South used their religiosity to reflect their very different political leanings. In Robert Abzug’s essay he stresses that the teachings of Northern revival preachers like Charles Grandison Finney lead to the reform thinking of many American’s in the early republic. Finney allowed women to worship and testify, and although he did not condemn slavery he urged his followers to contain its spread. Evangelicals in the North began to use revivalism to inform their abolitionist spirit. As Clark states in her essay, “The revival of passionate antislavery organization in the early 1830’s followed directly on the heels of the great wave of revivalism.” The North used the 2nd Great Awakening to foster ideas about the abolition of slavery, but the South used it to defend slavery.
Snay asserts that Southern preachers like Thornwall argued that because slaves had a conscience and that conscience cannot be possessed then slavery is not inhuman. These Southern preachers argued that slaves had a moral nature about them and Southern slaveholders had a moral obligation to help take care of these “childlike” people. This paternalistic view that many preachers took allowed them to provide a moral justification for slavery. These preachers also found evidence in the Old Testament to help buttress their argument for slavery.
The 2nd Great Awakening arose as a product of the rise of democratic individualism in early republic America. It championed the individual’s ability to accept his or her own salvation. The different regions of America chose to take very different interpretations of this new religious fervor in regards to slavery. The North used it to foster a belief in the evils of slavery and used it to foster abolitionist sentiment. While the South used it to help them defend the institution of slavery, and they had a religious obligation to care for their inferior slaves.
With the disestablishment of churches, both in Virginia as shown in Source 1 and in the rest of the United States, religion became a matter of personal choice and individual experience. While Sources 2 and 3 suggest that even disestablished faith could still bring large crowds and create groups of like-minded believers, the emphasis, as Finney mentions in source 4, was on the free "choice of a Supreme Ruler." (151) Deciding between God and Satan was as straightforward as deciding between the Republicans or Democrats at the polls, or between innocence and guilt on a jury. The earlier Protestant concept of predestination was thrown to the side in favor of a new imperative: use your free will to choose God.
ReplyDeleteAbzug and Snay's articles contrasted dramatically, with Abzug writing about religion and tumultuous social change in the Northeast and Snay analyzing the use of Christianity to justify the peculiar system. I thought that Snay's article was particularly interesting in light of Scraping By; both Thornwell and Baltimore businessmen saw nothing wrong with owning the "labor" of another man and did not apologize for making their livelihood from the sweat of another man's brow (last phrase stolen from a Lincoln speech). The conflict between individuals and social classes over religion described in Abzug's article is also in Snay's work, but Snay describes how the South's moral thinkers formed a weak and contracdictory compromise between the inherent humanity of a slave and the necessity of keeping them in bondage.
During the Early Republic, Religion seemed to literally spread like wildfire through the western back country but a lot of the religious steps taken at this times were full of contradictories . With the Bill of Rights upholding this, Thomas Jefferson held our nation accountable for having religious freedom, “Almighty God had created the mind free.” With the west expanding with a wide range of diversity in people, the religion was son to follow. Along with this religion freedom, a person had no obligation to even worship at all. However, slaves would flock to Christianity for religious practice. The slaves had the freedom to worship, but that was about it when even church congregations were split up between colors. African Americans in the north would see the inequality of the churches and spring up a number of independent churches. In document 6 of the sources, Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopalian church, tells about a story when the African American attendees started growing, the detestation of the black also grew. They were in church one day when they were removed during a prayer and forced to get up from where they were kneeling, during the prayer! Richard knew that it was time to instruct his “African brethren.” Contradictory it seems from a Christian standpoint. The religion at this time also seemed to fill the citizens of the Early Republic with foolish thoughts about women for justification reasons only. A.J. Graves is truly passionate about his false realization of women. In his document, it seems that although women are to remain at home and not get involved with anything else “upon her attention”, he places a great amount of responsibility on her calming that she must encourage “great interest of society” That seems to be a great task at hand. If we trust a woman to shape society between good or evil but she shouldn’t be allowed out of the home also seems contradictory. Even as of today, women are discouraged from being ministers in church which seems extremely outdated. With the freedom of worship, the floodgates opened up to an extreme amount of new religions, none more prominent than, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Joseph Smith was unsatisfied with what he saw about modern Christianity about their not being a denomination built around the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which he thought should be the basis. Joseph Smith’s revelation set up the religion to what it is today with millions of members proving that the religious freedom during the 2nd Great awakening can be linked to a lot of religious practices today. Robert Abzug article focused on the religious revivals that were taken place in the north. In the state of New York, it seemed that holy wars were taken place. He suggests that the expanding commerce in New York definitely had a reason for the communal disagreements. Also, many social implications of women had divided the state on their religion. I found Snay’s Article far more interesting about the South’s justification of slavery. He believed that moral philosophy and religion went hand in hand which “provided the main conceptual framework for the slaveholding ethic.” To Channing and Whelwell, slavery was wrong because it made a human an object. Thornwell believed that slaves were humans because of his “possession of conscience” and it was the owners’ responsibility to bring him into Christianity just as it was the slaves obligation to perform work for the master and mistreatment to slaves would be punishable by God. This allowed Southern clergymen to spring into politics because they now felt like they had a religious sanctification for slavery.
ReplyDeleteThe religious revival that occurred in the American colonies and territories during the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century was a movement toward increasingly strict religious principles. Deep feelings of religious devotion swept across the young republic in a way never seen before. It was an evangelical rebellion against the firmly established religious powers of mainstream catholicism/christianity; and of course satan. The people leading this movement were enamored with and driven by the concept of self-reliance. That is, that they felt that a person did not need to follow the traditional church-sanctioned methods of worship and repentance (amongst other requirements) in order to find salvation, but rather that it took an individual effort in order to attain it. The country was growing quickly, and with that growth came a myriad of different ethnicities, cultural beliefs, and religious backgrounds. With so much intermixing of different ideas, it should be simple to understand why individuality over established order came into popularity. There were just too many differing religious backgrounds for an established system to exist. So instead, the people of the young republic began to favor individual effort in religious beliefs over the traditional system. Many felt that all a person needed to do to attain salvation was to study the bible and develop their own idea of what it meant and then live accordingly. In this way, people could hold differing interpretations of religion and still get along with one another. In such a diverse country this movement toward religious toleration over persecution was a foregone conclusion if any stability was to exist. This was clearly reflected at the time in the political arena as well. Freedom of religion is one of the core principles of this country, and in the late eighteenth century men like Thomas Jefferson enacted it into law through the General Assembly. The focus of the time was on the freedom of ideas and the individual's personal responsibility to live a righteous life in order to attain salvation.
ReplyDeleteThe Azbug essay is consistent with the ideas I have stated above. He focuses on the religious revival in the north. He points out that it was generally led by young people and those who felt that the traditional established system was oppressing them. They were committed to individualism and morality coupled with strong religious convictions, whatever those convictions might be.
The Snay essay focuses on the revival in the south, and especially on how religion mixed with slavery. The people of the south used references of slavery in the old testament to develop a religious support of the practice of owning slaves. They felt that because the slaves were actually "inferior" people, that they (the slave owners) were doing god's work by looking after the people who couldn't take care of themselves.
Jefferson’s ideals about religious freedoms lay the groundwork for America’s experience with religion. Jefferson argues for the freedom of debate, “errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted to freely contradict them.” He also argues that religion should not be compulsory, nor should it be restrained.
ReplyDeleteUnder these pretenses religion in the early republic provides an avenue of rebellion and self expression that is acceptable in the civic discourse (though certainly contested and divisive). Freedom of religion may have been one of the few tangible freedoms that an otherwise socially limited citizen possessed.
Azbug characterizes the revivals as controversial, sweeping, exciting, and affecting. His account matches the primary sources, where examples of over the top revivals and radical change seem common and prevalent.
Shay delves into the political concerns of this excitement. In the south revivalism could threaten the very sacred established social order. Southern clergy found the responsibility of preserving slavery as an institution at their feet. In this circumstance religion seems no longer to have been an intellectual exercise, nor a personal expression but a systematic social construct that was depended on to keep order. Southern Christian morality was based on reaffirming the social stratifications. Religion in the South was about more than a fight for souls, it was obviously a fight for economic position and social control.
Religion in the early republic seems to have been the tool of each side of every argument; A forum for debate in some cases, but a means for control in others. Open criticism was a powerful platform and both sides of the issue were loudly voicing their dissatisfaction. The particulars of divinity, scripture and salvation seem to have, in some cases, taken a backseat to a struggle for influence. All of these various sects of Protestant Christianity were competing for opportunity to influence the general populace.
The ideals of individualism and the concerns of the establishment were raging against one and other.
The Second Great Awakening was a period of great religious upheaval in the early Republic. While freedom of and from religion is one of the dearest rights in our nation, the religious fervor of the early Republic made a dramatic impact on society.
ReplyDeleteThe diversity of religion was dramatic. With the new frontiers, rivals emerged to the traditional establishment religions. While there was a religion among conservative Anglicans, Methodists, Catholics, and Presbyterians new more radical fringe groups emerged within various denominations. Many were typified by their evangelical nature where they aggressively attempted to "save" people. This pursuit of conversion is typified by the sermon of Charles Grandison Finney.
Race, class, and gender played important roles in religion. While the traditional elites back east largely embraced traditional religions the individualism of hte frontier pushed practices more active and inclusive practices. In Kentucky one revival included people being "touched" which include acts that resembled convulsions, and it involved far more than simply acknowledging ministers to lead services.
Changes in northern religion focused mainly on independence. Abzug pays attention to Republican ideals, and the importance of individual citizens in diversifying the religious establishment. To many northerners this created difficulty with slavery in a free society. However Snay discusses the pains southern clergy went to in order to justify slavery. They went so far as to claim that slaves were still individuals because they had independence of conscience. Their efforts while diligent were pained because they had to reconcile American ideals of individualism with the economic mechanisms of the south. While southerners wanted to view themselves as part of the Republic, slavery drove a hard wedge which clergy struggled to close.
Religion in the midst of the 19th century would play a major role in the development of political schisms-specifically between North and South, slave and free states. In fact, there would develop a definite dichotomy as Southerners would use the narrative of Ham in the Old testament to reinforce the morality of their practice of slavery, and evangelicals would largely attack the Southern defenses-stirring a national debate not just over slavery, but the hypocrisy of Christian oppression.
ReplyDeleteAs the tension that had begun with Republican/Virginian domination of national politics festered, the issue of slavery would serve to be the true powder keg issue, eventually leading to the crisis of the 1840’s and 50’s. Religion simply served as the vessel of debate between North and South. It is important to remember that the North was not a progressive, pro African American society; it was a society scared of continued political marginalization should slavery have been allowed to continue to spread. While there most certainly was religious zealots, who did have pure intentions of freeing and helping Southern black populations-with all the Christian charity in the world; it is more likely that Northern radical elites used religion as propaganda (as with Southern planters) to mobilize the masses. As the country began moving West, and the ideals of manifest destiny began taking root, the political, and thus religious, debate would only intensify