The document provides background on the Puritan vision and struggle in New England, covering their theological roots in Calvinism, the political conditions they faced in England under kings like James I and Charles I, and key figures like Jean Calvin and Oliver Cromwell. It discusses how Puritans sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic influences and establish a godly commonwealth in the New World, fleeing persecution and forming settlements like the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies in the early 1600s.

1. Albanese Ch 4
American Protestant Origins and the
Liberal Christian Tradition

2. The Protestant Reformation
Reform, Crisis, and
Transformation

3. Factors Leading to Protestant
Reformation
• Social unrest, disease, dissension in Europe led to criticism of Catholic
church
• Critics charged
– Hypocrisy
– Exploitation of believers
– Lack of spirituality
• Humanism
– Recovery of classical literature and philosophy
• Return to ancient texts
– Examination of Bible in original languages
– Effort to restore ancient Christianity
– Effort to advance society through individual self-expression

4. Three Movers and Shakers
1. Martin Luther
2. Henry VIII
3. John Calvin

5. 1. Martin Luther (1483-1546)
• Zealous, scrupulous, anxious Augustinian monk
• Discovers St. Paul’s Theology of Faith and Grace
• “the just shall live by faith alone…”
• studies Galatians and Romans
• Advocates for moral reform, end of Indulgence
system
• Advocates for Universal Priesthood of all Believers,
Sola Scriptura, and universal access to Bible.
• Ideas spark profound controversy
• Spreads due to printing press
• 1521, goes into hiding, translates Bible into German
• Marries, encourages other monks and nuns to break
vows and also do so; later becomes conservative,
anti-semitic, and condemns peasant revolts.
• Religious wars

6. 2. Henry VIII (1491-1547)
• Wife Catherine bears no child,
marries Anne Boleyn
• Breaks with Rome due to no
annulment granted
• 1533 - appoints 1st Archbishop of
Cantebury
• Political and economic motivations
also behind this Reformation in
England.
• Elizabeth I stabilizes the Church
of England
• Puritans want to “purify” the CoE
of even more “popish” influence.

7. English Politics - Brief Version
• Elizabeth I (Tudor)
• James I (Stuart) 1566-
1625
– episcopal government of
churches
– Angered Puritans—wanted
each church ruled by elders
– Passed anti-Puritan
legislation
– Banned Puritan books
– P’s flee to the New World
• Jamestown (1607)
• Plymouth (1620)
– Moved to escape James’
policies

8. More English Politics
• 1625 James I dies, replaced by son Charles I
– Believed in divine right of Kings
– Favored Anglican worship
– Marries a Catholic from France
• Daughter of Henry IV, King of France
– Bad relationship with Parliament
• Dissolves Parliament in 1629
• Has to recall Parliament in 1640 for funding
• Parliament refuses, dissolved again
– “Short Parliament”
• Recalls Parliament in November 1640
– “Long Parliament”

9. Don’t Mess with Parliament
– Bad relationship with Parliament
• Archbishop Laud arrested
• Parliament tries to impeach bishops, the Queen
• Charles tries to arrest members of Parliament
• Civil War
• Parliament wins, tries and beheads Charles 1649
• “Glorious Revolution” with Oliver Cromwell (Puritan), et
al. - no king until the “Restoration” in 1660 with Charles
II. End of Puritan hopes for a “purified Church of
England.”

10. 3. John Calvin (1509-1564)
• Doctor, Theologian of the (Catholic)
Church until conversion experience.
• Writes Institutes of the Christian Religion
• Leads Reformed Church in Geneva,
Switzerland
• Very austere version of “primitive” or
original Christianity
• Influenced by St. Augustine
• Predestination
• Sovereignty of God
• Vocation or calling (economic activity as
prayer)

11. Significant Calvinist Doctrine
• Other doctrines of note:
– predestination
– Vocation or work as prayer
– providence
– justification by faith
– sola scriptura
• Summary:
– Looked up to Luther but went further (beyond Bible)
– Committed to humanist project: emphasis on text,
Biblical languages, philology
– Read Bible like a legal document
– Concerned with the creation of a holy commonwealth
(an ideal, godly society)

12. Crisis of Religious Authority
• Catholics fight Lutherans in Germany --devastating
religious warfare
• Peace of Augsburg (1555) -- does not resolve issues
• Thirty Year’s War 1618-1648 -- all European powers
involved -- again, devastating religious warfare
• Church authority closely tied to political authority,
social stability.
• Protestants had to solve the problem of reconfiguring
these three. Sola Scriptura.

13. Traits of Protestantism
• Emphasis on transcendent authority of
God
• Emphasis on sole authority of Christ to
save sinners
• Adherence to biblical teaching
• Belief in the transformation of human
society

14. Significance of Traits
• Separation from Catholic church
• Changed the way Protestants thought
politically not just religiously
• Created an emphasis on the individual
• Created opening for Science

15. English Puritanism Overview
• Name given in 16th century to those who felt the
English Reformation had not gone far enough
• Acceptance under Elizabeth I
• Setbacks under James I and Charles I
• “Pilgrims” in 1620 to Plymouth Colony
• Larger, less separatist group in 1630 to
Massachusetts Bay Colony
• 1649 – Oliver Cromwell opened the door to a Puritan
Commonwealth in England which lasted until his
death 1658
– the death of organized Puritanism in England in 1662

16. Significance for Religion in the
United States
• Protestantism (eventually) became the religious
viewpoint for England and then the colonies
• Changes in monarch’s religion affected others
– Affected migration
– Affected policies in the colonies
• Religious toleration shaped the colonial mindset
– People moved to the colonies for religious toleration
– People were tolerant (or intolerant) based on their
experience in England
– Some colonies formed specifically for religious toleration

17. English Exploration:
Catching up to the Catholic
Joneses and Anglican
Establishment

18. Conflict with Spain
• Elizabeth I (1558-1603)
– Sir Francis Drake
– Defeat of Spanish Armada
(1588)
– “The Glory of God and the
Good of my Country”
– Missionizing Zeal to “catch up”
with the Spanish and French
– England’s distinctive approach
to the New World:
• Settlements and towns
• Not forts or trading posts
• Missionaries could train first
and learn Indians’ language
before they “distill into their
purged minds the lively liquor
of the gospel” (Hakluyt).

19. Promotion Campaign
• Richard Hakluyt the Younger
(1552-1616): “Let’s not waste time
arguing about who has a right to what, let
us go out, lay claim to the land, and take
it as our own. This enterprise may stay
the Spanish King from flowing over all the
face of that vast [land] of America, if we
seat and plant there in time, in time I say.”
• Samuel Purchas (1577-1626):
writes Purchas his Pilgramage in 1613 -
huge 4 volume history of the world with
English clerical religion on top of it all, for
all other “worn-out rites or present
irreligious religions” would all be washing
in the “purer stream of sacred baptism.”

20. More Propaganda and Hardship
• 1584 Walter Raleigh’s ships return from Virg and N Carolina coast with
glowing reports: “… a land full of deer, rabbits, and fowl; waters alive
with fish; soil the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful and wholesome of the
whole world” and Indians who were “kind and loving people.”
• 1585 Sir Francis Drake picks up the few colonists (all men) remaining
at Roanoke Island (off N. Carolina) - the first aborted attempt at
settlement. Among them are Thomas Hariot (writer) and John White
(artist) who inspire others to try again.
• 1587 Walter Raleigh sends 150 settlers (including women and children
- Virginia Dare born). 4 years later, when the governor, John White
returns, there is nothing to be found. Still a mystery.

21. Jamestown Virginia (for the Virgin Queen, Eliz I)
• 1607 Jamestown settlement established with 100 settlers. Only
50 remained 9 months later. Due to propaganda, expectations
way out of tune with reality.
• 1622 population up to 2000, but a fifth die in Indian attacks
(John Rolfe died, as had his wife, Pocahontas 5 years before).
• Alexander Whitaker (1587-1617) organizes parish system and
sends his sermon “Good News from Virginia” back to England
(more propaganda).
• 1619 Church Of England established by Virginia legislature -
glebe lands, 39 Articles, exclusive. “…and if any other person
pretending himself a minister shall, contrary to this Act, presume to
teach or preach publicly or privately, the Governor & Council are hereby
desired and impowered to suspend & silence the person so offending.”

22. More on Virginia
• 1662 Virginia legislature creates “vestries” of 12 “of the most able men of each parish” to
oversee ecclesiastical affairs.
• Problems:
– Parishes laid out in huge tracts of land difficult to navigate
– Chuches not at center of community, when they are built at all - Plantations remain the center of
sacred life as in secular life
– Ministers hard to come by as they get paid in tobacco or corn from their glebe lands, and the prices
fluctuate.
– Ministers often the dregs who left England to escape bad debts, unhappy marriages, or unsavory
reputations… In 1632, the Legislature felt it necessary to decree “Ministers shall not give themselves
to excess in drinking, or riot, spending their time idley by day or night playing at dice, cards, or an
other unlawful game; but they shall … occupy themselves with some honest study or exercise, always
doing the things which shall appertain to honesty, and endeavor to profit the Church of God…and to
excel all others in purity of life and be an example to the people to live well and Christianly.”
• These Problems resolved with founding of the College of William and Mary (1693) to train
ministers and formation of Societies in England (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
1699 and Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1701) that gave scholarships and
books to colonists.

23. Challenges to the C of E in Virginia
(1700’s)
• Dissenters tended to settle in the
foothills - furthest away from the
Tidewater parishes.
• Presbyterians: Samuel Davies
(1723-1761) arrives from
Pennsylvania in 1749, but can not
minister legally and complains that
Willaim and Mary’s 1689
Declaration of Religious Toleration
was not being honored in Virginia.
• London-based Board of Trade
advised that “a toleration and free
exercise of religion is so valuable a
branch of true liberty and so essential to
the improving and enriching [of] a trading
nation, it should ever be held sacred to
His Majesty’s Colonies”
• Davies evangelized widely among
whites and blacks (100,000 in 1750
- over 40% of population).

24. C of E Missionizing Efforts and Black
Conversions
• From 1619 when first slaves imported, black and slavery were
synonymous, though several freed slaves had their own farms on the
Virginia coast.
• Efforts to convert slaves and catechize (instruct) impeded by:
– Plantation owners did not want to give any time off to slaves for rel ed.
– Fear that Christian baptism might change slaves social status (free).
– Illiteracy among slaves. Anglican style very bookish and ritualized (reading
prayers, etc)
– Baleful opinion that maybe blacks had no souls.
– Therefore, no incentive for blacks to convert.
• Evangelical Christianity much much more appealing
– Sung, shouted, danced religiosity more consistent with African forms
– Egalitarian allowing for black leadership
– Gowan Pamphlet and Moses organized their own independent Baptist
Church in Williamsburg, VA by 1780’s.

25. More Challenges to the C of E in Virginia
• Baptists - reject hierarchy and
credentialing of ministers. Just the call of
God is enough.
• Shubal Stearns (1706-1771) arrives in 1754
from NE and makes many converts. He moves
on to North Carolina, but one Anglican Minister
warned in 1759 that this “shocking Delusion …
threaten the entire subersion of true Religion in
these parts, unless the principled persons
concerned in that delusion are apprehended or
otherwise restrained.”
• John Leland (1754-1841) arrives in 1776 from
NE and joins Presbyterians in petitioning Virginia
legislature for leniency. “State establishment of
religion has done more harm to the cause of
Christ than all the persecutions ever did.”
Created many new Baptist churches in Virgina.

26. More Challenges to the C of E in Virginia
• Methodists achieve
independent status from the C
of E in 1784 but had been very
important since John (1703-
1791) and Charles (1707-1788)
Wesley founded the movement.
• Sought to strengthen personal
piety and to reach common
laborers who had been
abandoning the C of E.
• Open-air revivals, itinerant
evangelism, small class
meetings, and lots of prayer.
• Deveraux Jarrett (1733-1801) in
New Kent County was a leader
of Methodism in Virginia.

27. Church and State in Virginia
• Over 50 Baptist and Presbyterian preachers jailed or
expelled after 1759. In 1774, 6 preachers jailed in Orange
County observed by the future-president James Madison who
condemned that “diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution.”
• Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) proposes “Bill for
Establishing Religious Freedom” in 1779 - passes 1786.
• Patrick Henry and other patriots argue that if the C of E is not to be
established, then at least “the Christian Religion shall in all times
coming be deemed and held to be the established Religion of this
Commonwealth” - but his bill fails to pass as it is opposed by James
Madison.
• James Madison (1751-1836) presents his famous “Memorial
and Remonstrance” against Patrick Henry’s bill. Arguing with John
Leland that, “since the days of Constantine, government establishment
of religion had always been bad for religion…” as it created “pride and
indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both,
superstition, bigotry, and persecution.”

28. Conclusion
• After the War for Independence, the C of E was an
anachronism. Even after 1776, steps were taken to make
the break - hence Episcopalian Church.
• From a failure at Roanoke and frailty at Jamestown came
great success for Anglicanism in Virginia - but no such
success in any other colony.
• Cultural influence: Southern concern for “manners” -
imitation of English models of politeness, formality, dress.

29. Puritan Vision
and Struggle in New England
(Errand into the Wilderness)

30. Who were the Puritans?
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956), journalist, freethinker,
social critic, in "On Being an American" called
the United States "... incomparably the best
show on Earth….”
Also contains his famous quote describing
Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone,
somewhere, might be happy."
Common cultural conceptions, but how true are
they??

32. Puritan Vision and Struggle
Part I: Theological Background
Part II: The Story and the Players
Part III: The Puritans Legacy in American
Religious History

33. Part I: Background
• Conditions in England
• Jean Calvin and Calvinism
(Reform Theology)
• Politics in England

34. Conditions in England
• Persecution under James I
• Charles I and Civil War
• Oliver Cromwell
• Restoration under Charles II

35. Jean Calvin’s Theology
TULIP:
– Total Depravity
– Unconditional Election
– Limited Atonement
– Irresistible Grace
– Perseverance of the Saints
Sovereignty of God, Predestination, Vocation
Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1920)

36. Puritans, Precisemen,
Precisionists
• “Puritan” originally used to describe a 3rd c. CE sect
of heretics.
• Came to be used as pejorative term(s) for “low
church” Anglicans who favored further reform of the
Church of England after Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
• They referred to themselves as “the godly,” “the
saintly,” or followers of “true religion.”

37. Three Types of Puritans
1. Puritans who want to purify but remain in
the Church of England.
2. Presbyterians who want to substitute
Presbyterian form of church government for
the Episcopalian.
3. Independents who want to purify and have
only independent small churches.
- Separatists like Pilgrims at Plymouth
- Non-Separatists like Puritans of Massachusetts

38. Independents’ Dilemma
• Francis Mason (1605): “Then see, I beseech you, into what
perplexities you cast yourselves. If you should conforme, you tell us
that you should sinne, because it is against your conscience; and if
you doe not conforme, wee must tell you that you sinne, because it
is unjustifieable disobedience.”
• Giles Widdowes (1630): “The Puritan tenet is, that Kings must bee
subject to the Puritan Presbyters…Thus the oaths of Superacie, and
allegiance are broken. This Puritan is an Arch-traitor.”
• Samuel Brooke (1630): “Puritanism is the root of all rebellion and
disobedient intractablenesse, and schism, and sauciness in the
country.”

39. Motivations for Exodus
• “Popish” Church of England
– Book of Common Prayer
– Hierarchies of bishops and King.
• The difficulties with James and Charles and loss of
Parliament (where they had support)
• Puritan clergy concerned with the “contagion of
wickedness” and its effect on the young people
• The appeal of creating a Christian nation as an
example/witness for the world - this was their Errand
(into the wilderness).
– Not motivated by economics or social equality

40. Part II: Story and Players
• Getting There
• John Winthrop
• Roger Williams
• Anne Hutchinson and John Cotton
• Indians
• Declension and Witchcraft
• Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening

41. Getting There
Pilgrims (Separatists) arrive first:
• 1607: a congregation from Nottingham
goes to Holland. They become the
Pilgrims. 1620: Mayflower sets out with
102 people for N. Virginia and land at
Plymouth Rock. William Bradford
(1590-1657) is governor for 30 years.
• 12 of 26 men died; 18 of 21 women
died in the first Winter. Thanksgiving for
seeing the first harvest in 1621
(Squanto).
• Small colony: 1000 in 1640 and 2000
in 1660 (compare to Boston with 20,000
in 1660)
• Mayflower Compact

42. Plymouth Colony
• “…a great inward hope
and zeal.” - William Bradford
• Saw themselves as “stepping
stones unto others…laying
some good foundation, or at
least to make some way
therunto, for the propagating &
advancing the gospel of the
kingdom of Christ in those
remote parts of the world.”
• Very humble, mainly intent on
escaping worldly snares, not
so interested in reforming the
Church of England.
• Absorbed into larger
Massachusettes Colony in
1691.

43. Getting
(More)
There
• Royal Grant to all of New England in
1620 to the Council for New England.
• Pilgrims were just one of various groups
that settled along coast.
• 1628 Council granted charter to a group
of Puritan merchants - the New England
Company.
• John Endecott, a Puritan is sent to take
charge of small Salem “Plantation”
• 1629 (just before Charles dissolved
parliament) NEC obtains a royal charter
confirming the grant, now they become
“Governor and Company of the
Massachusetts Bay in New England” -
pretty independent now.

44. Massachusetts Bay Colony
• Not schizmatic like Pilgrims.
• John Winthrop (1588-1649) sets
sail aboard the Arbella in 1630 to
establish covenantal community with
God.
• 400 men, women, children in first 4
ships - 600 more follow.
• Land at Salem, but go to Boston
peninsula - very defensible.
• 200 die during first winter, 200 more
call it quits by next Spring.
• But many more arrive - 15,000-20,000
Puritans fled Charles’ attempt to rule
without Parliament - “The Great
Migration”
• “…Citte on a hill…”

45. John Winthrop
• First Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony
• Wealthy puritan merchant of some renown
• “And who knows, but that god hath provided this
place, to be a refuge for manye, whom he
means to save out of the general destruction.”
• “It hath pleased the Lorde to call me to further
trust in this business of the plantation, than
either I expected or finde my selfe fitt for.”
• A great leader, organizer, and intensely religious.

46. “…the Lord will be out God and delight to dwell
among us, as his owne people and will
commaund a blessing upon us in all our wayes,
soe that wee shall see much more of his
wisdome power goodnes and truthe… wee shall
finde that the God of Israell is among us, when
tenn of us shall be able to resist a thousand of
our enemies…for wee must Consider that wee
shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all
people are uppon us.” -- Journals, John Winthrop
(1630)

47. Winthrop’s Ideas
“Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into
covenant with him for his work. We have taken out a commission,
the Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles.”
If the ships land safely, it would be God’s sign of having sealed the
covenant. Should the people betray their promises, “…the Lord will
surely break out in wrath against us, be revenged of such a perjured
people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a
covenant.”
“…to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk
humbly with our God.”
“We must be knit together as one man.”
“We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own,
rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always
having before our eyes our commission and community in the work,
our community as members of the same body….then God in turn
would delight to dwell among us as his own people.”
“We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall
be able to resist a thousand of our enemies.” - Journals.

48. More on Massachusettes
• The Puritan Way expanded to
Connecticut and then to New
Hampshire
• Congregationalism = Puritanism
• Edward Taylor, Puritan Poet wrote:
“Lord, Can a Crumb of Dust the
Earth outweigh Outmatch all
mountains, nay the Chrystall Sky?” -
humans are the dust.
• Emphasis on education, Harvard
founded just 7 years after landing.
Each township had a school.
• “Salvation is given by God, not
earned by women or men.” -
Samuel Willard (1640-1707)

49. Puritan Social Life
• Education
• Church membership = communion of saints
• Family affection, covenantal relationships
• Civil meetings take place in Meeting House = Church.
Theocracy?
• Humility
• Emphasis/obsession on community/purity
• Industriousness
• Willingness to endure hardship, struggle, endure.

50. Sources of Conflict
• Winthrop came as the governor of Mass Colony
– duty to establish the communal order, economic, legal, etc.
responsibilities.
– focused on the pragmatics and alert to dangers.
– he thought that since the people of Boston were true Christians
they had sin under control (not eradicated), but a healthy body
can get rid of disease.
• Roger Williams (1603-1682) comes to Boston in 1631 as
minister, but had problems with the Puritans:
• 1) shouldn’t claim to still be part of the C of E while pursuing diff paths of
worship and thought - can not “build a square house on top of a ship’s keel.”
• 2) no acknowledgement of Indians ownership of land. Not “empty land” -
and who gave it to the King of England in the first place?
• 3) Did not agree with “the setting up of civil power and officers to judge the
conviction of men’s souls.”

51. Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams
• Anne Hutchinson (1591-1643)
– Hutchinson sees Puritanism as
a means of self-expression
– she does a great job of
discussing John Cotton’s
sermons in her kitchen with as
much as 80 people
– she served as a teacher when it
wasn’t allowed for women
• Antinomianism “against the law”
• Enthusiasm “presumption to be
directly inspired by God” - like the
prophets of old themselves.

52. Ideological Differences
• Preparation v. Assurance
– the Winthrop people felt that the most you could look for in
this life is the hope of salvation
– the Hutchinson group (including John Cotton) said there is
another stage
• the sealing of the assurance where you have Christ in a union
• consummation of the wedding (enthusiasm)
• there is a new creature now, not happening later in heaven,
Christ has taken over your personality
– then you can do no wrong  there is no earthly, human law that
can condemn or judge you (Antinomianism)

53. Religious Dissent and
Authority
• Winthrop gathered ministers and town leaders together to put
pressure on John Cotton and persuaded him over time to reject
Hutchinson
• Hutchinson was exiled from Massachusetts and moved to
Rhode Island
– She died in an Indian attack in 1643 in New York
• Roger Williams is banished (in Winter) and then founds the colony of
“Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” based on religious freedom
and tolerance.
– Bought the land from Indians.
– Organized a separate church
– Determined that civil government would have nothing to do with
religion.

54. • Williams is exiled by law that was not revoked
until 1936 with Massachusetts House Bill 488
which formally ended 300 years of exile
• "Whereas Mr. Roger Williams, one of the Elders of the
church of Salem, hath broached and divulged new and
dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates,
as also written letters of defamation, both of the
magistrates and churches here, and that before any
conviction, and yet maintaineth the same without any
retraction; it is, therefore, ordered that the said Mr.
Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six
weeks now next ensuing . . . "

55. Inscription on Monument:
ANN HUTCHINSON
Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony In 1638
Because of Her Devotion to Religious Liberty This
Courageous Woman Sought Freedom From Persecution
In New Netherland Near This Rock in 1643 She and Her
Household Were Massacred by Indians
This Tablet is placed here by the Colonial Dames of the State of New
York
Anno Domini MCMXI

56. Indians
• How to regard the native peoples?
• Squanto (Tisquatum) - English
speaking native who assisted
Pilgrims through 1st winter. They
would not have survived w/o him.
• Pequot War (1637)
• King Phillip’s War (1676)
(Narangansetts)
• Captives and exchange
• Missionizing and “Praying Indians”

57. Rhode Island: A New Idea
• Rhode Island was established as the first secular
state.
• It emphasized democracy instead of theocracy or
monarchy.
– Election was done “by papers” (ballots) freely given by all
free inhabitants
• It also emphasized religious freedom.
– Individuals were allowed to "walk as their conscience
persuaded them, every one in the name of his God.”
– “Forced worship stinks in God’s nostrils.”
• It emphasized the separation of church and state.

58. Rhode Island and Williams
Rejected
• The “orthodox” Puritans of Massachusetts referred to
Rhode Island as “the Lord’s debris.”
• Others joked that if someone had lost their religion, they
were sure to find it somewhere in Rhode Island.
• In 1643 Rhode Island was refused admission into the
coalition of colonies that was established for protection
from the Indians.

59. Declension and Intolerance
• 2nd and 3rd generations not so religious…
• Baptism at birth then clear conversion experience
expected, but 2nd generation not having them
• “Halfway Covenant” to keep 2nd gen. in the covenant
of the Church
• Admitted to Sacraments to encourage or facilitate
conversion…
• Quakers and Baptists expelled, flogged, or hung.

60. Solomon Stoddard (1643-
1749)
• Suggests the Halfway Covenant in 1677
• Decline of virtue
• Rise of economic success in trade with
England, economic disparities are visual
indications of the fracturing community.
• Trade goods from England seen as signs of
indulgence. What is happening?
• The Devil, that’s what…..

61. Wonders and Witchcraft
Trials
• “World of Wonders”
• Activity of the supernatural in the modern world
• Dabbling with astrology, magic, alchemy
• Part of the daily life of most people in New England in
1600s
• Practice of magic connected to Christianity in
compatible ways
• Both God and Satan worked through “occult” ways
• Attempt to identify God’s “miracles” vs. Satan’s
“wonders”

62. Witchcraft Trials
• Salem Witch Trials (1692) most famous
– But early trials from 1648 and 1651 Mrs. Kendal is first
execution.
• Belief that Satan was trying to overturn social order
• Salem: 160 accused, 19 executed (15 women) and 1
man pressed to death.
• Why did they happen?
– Personalities
– Social differences
– Psychological needs
– Gender issues: Devil in the Shape of a Woman (1987) Carol
Karlsen
– Politics: In the Devil's Snare (2002) Mary Beth Norton

63. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and The
Great Awakening
• New Preaching
• “There is no question whatsoever that is of greater
importance to mankind then this: What is the nature of
true religion?”
• Emphasis on Affections
• “Spiritual wisdom and grace is the highest and most
excellent gift that ever God bestows on any creature, it is
not a thing that belongs to reason…it is not a speculative
thing, but depends on the sense of the heart.”
• Difference between being told that honey is sweet and
the taste of it for oneself….
• Jeremaids

64. Summary
• Halfway Covenant, Witch Trials, Jeremiads,
Great Awakening, Indian problems,
Hutchinson and Williams all indicate the need
for adaptation.
• Divine Providence was challenged again and
again leading to crises of faith
• The Errand becomes an adventure
• Search for a new, unique, American identity.

65. Part III: Legacy
• Myth of the Pilgrims?
• Transformation and Continuation,
Scholarly Debates…
• Core of American Culture?

66. So How/Why the Myth of Pilgrims?
• 1820: Daniel Webster (1782-1852) coined the term “Pilgrim
Fathers” taking the term “Pilgrim” from William Bradford journals.
He overlooked the differences between Separatists and New
England Puritans.
• In the face of tensions before the Civil War, nation-wide movement
to celebrate Thanksgiving Day as a means of uniting the nation
under a consensual myth. The Pilgrim’s quest for religious freedom
equated to Colonial quest for independence from England, the Old
World. American stands for freedom (from slavery too).
• 1863: Abraham Lincoln declares Thanksgiving Day a national
holiday.

67. Transformation or
Continuation?
• Sydney E. Ahlstrom: Continuity from 1463 to 1963
(Elizabeth to JFK)
• Aesthetic Thesis: Calvin to Edwards to Emerson to
Social Gospel to Martin Luther King, Jr to 60’s
“Awakening”
• Reformed Theological Tradition: rising up to Civil
War, then declining.
• Aesthetic core? Intellectual? Cultural? Pluribus or
Unum?

68. Historical Connections
• Great Awakenings and Evangelical Christianity
• American Protestantism Today
– Christian Conservatives
– Fundamentalists
– Pentecostals
– Mainline or Liberal Christians
• Transcendentalism
– True Religion becomes universal religion using non-biblical
language (Self, Oversoul, Self-reliance, etc.)

69. Beginnings of American
Culture
• Mobilization toward unique American identity
• Core theme of independence and individual conscience
• Core dilemma of social order and self-expression
• Missionary efforts as expansionism/imperialism
– Slaves, leading to Civil War
– Indians, leading into the West
• Education, Ivy League Universities

70. The myth(s) of the Puritans?
• Puritans as founders of God’s nation
• Puritans concerned that someone somewhere is
having a good time
• Scapegoating (Catholics, Reds, Homosexuals,
Terrorists)
Some truth in each.

71. A loss of something ever felt I-
The first that I could recollect
Bereft I was - of what I knew not
Too young that any should suspect
A Mourner walked among the children
I notwithstanding went about
As one bemoaning a Dominion
Itself the only Prince cast out -
Elder, Today, A session wiser
And fainter, too, as Wiseness is -
I find myself still softly searching
For my Delinquent Palaces -
And a Suspicion, like a Finger
Touches my Forehead now and then
That I am looking oppositely
For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven.
ca. 1864 Emily Dickinson

72. Middle
Colonies
New York and
Pennsylvania
(and maybe New Jersey)

73. Dutch and New Amsterdam
• Henry Hudson explores the
area in 1609
• By 1624 Dutch settlements
from Albany, to New
Amsterdam, Long Island.
• 1629 Dutch Reformed
Church is established.
• Peter Stuyvesant (1592-1672)
becomes director general in
1647 and wants to clean up all
of the diversity. Citizens reject
his intolerance.
• 1664 Brits take over.

74. Swedish Lutherans on the Delaware
• 1643 John Printz (1592-
1663) establish Fort
Christina near today’s
Wilmington
• John Campanius (1601-
1683) learns language of
Delaware indians and has some
success converting them.
• 1654 Stuyvesant walks in after
Swedes manage to overtake a
Dutch settlement first.
• The colony is less than a
thousand people and
Lutheranism will wait until the
latter 1800’s when Germans
arrive to revivify it.

75. New York
• Lord Cornbury (1661-1723)
as governor establishes the
Church of England in 1693 -
against the Rules of Surrender
that garaunteed toleration for all
Christians (not Jews).
• Only 90 Anglican families; 1,754
Dutch Reformed and 1,355
English dissenter families at the
time.
• Presbyterian minister Francis
Makemie (1658-1708) is
arrested by Cornbury, Quakers
expelled, Dutch ministers de-
certified and replaced with
Anglicans. Scandal??

76. Woodcut from Hugh Gaine, New York Almanac, 1771.

78. Penn’s Colony: Holy Experiment
• Founded later than others in
1682 - could learn from
others’ mistakes.
• William Penn (1644-1718)
Oxford educated, converted to
Quakerism in 1667 - long time
and early advocate of “Liberty of
Conscience”
• Charles II owed Penn’s father
money for military service, so
gave his son, William, the
woods to the West of the
Delaware River - “Penn’s
Woods”

79. Frame of Government
• A home, not only for Quakers,
“but to all persons living in this
province who confess and
acknowledge the one almighty
and eternal God to be the
creator…agreeing to live
peaceably and justly in civil
society [would] in no ways be
molested or prejudiced for their
religious persuasion or practice
in matters of faith and worship,
nor shall they be compelled at
any time to frequent or maintain
any religious worship, place, or
ministry whatever.”
“with your love and
consent”

80. Brotherly Love
• Best relations with Indians of any colony.
• Philadelphia carefully planned city.
• German immigrants given 6000 acres for “Germantown”
• Mennonites, Amish, Anabaptists - all severely persecuted in
Europe settle to West of Quakers in Lancaster County
• Ephrata community founded by pietist visionary Conrad Beissel
(1690-1768) in 1732 (Seventh-day Baptists)
• Moravians establish Bethlehem community.
• Scots Irish Presbyterians, Welsh Baptists, Irish Catholics,
Anglicans, free Methodists - overwhelmingly diverse.
• “Liberty without obedience is confusion, and obedience without
liberty is slavery.” - William Penn

81. Summary
• Pennsylvania remains dominated by
Quakers until mid 1700’s
• Middle colonies represent the future:
– Pluralism
– Postpluralism of religious combination(s)

82. Colonial Foreshadowings of
Christian Liberalism
1. Theology: What ever happened to
Liberalism?
2. Separation of Church and State?
3. Up to the Civil War
4. Science, the Social Gospel, and
Gospel of Wealth
5. Liberal Christianity today

83. New Social and Political
Realities in America
• Liberal, liberate, liberty = freedom
• Baptists and individual consent to (adult)
Christian baptism
– “total depravity”
– Individual freedom
• Jacobus Arminius
– “Arminianism”
– Less hellfire, more virtue
– Predestination inconsistent with
American individualism
• Latitudinarians in England

84. Religion and Politics
• Calvinist Ideas of Politics:
• Biblical admonitions that
Christians must be subject to
the “powers that be” (Paul) and
“render unto Ceasar…” (Jesus).
• Reformed Churches were
“Churches under the Cross”
• Checks and Balances
• “It is safer and more tolerable for the
government to be in the hands of the
many that they may afford each other
mutual assistance and admonition, and
that if any one arrogate to himself more
than is right, the many may act as
censors and masters to restrain his
ambition… No kind of government is
more happy than this,…” -- Institutes, IV,
xx, 8

85. Jonathan Locke’s Political Theory
• Government is not absolute
• Government is the result of a
“social compact”
• Government is made by free,
equal, independent men
• Government is instituted by
the consent of the governed

86. Puritan Opposition to Democracy?
• John Winthrop: “A democracy is
among most civil nations accounted
the meanest and worst of all forms
of government.”
• John Cotton: “Democracy? - I do
not conceive that ever God did
ordain it as a fit government either
for church or commonwealth.”
• Thomas Jefferson believed in
democracy only at the township
level.
• But there is a difference between
“classical” or Greek democracy and
the “mixed government” that they all
advocated for:
• Checks and Balances

87. Stamp Act and Taxation, sure.
But Religious Precipitation of Revolution?
• John Cotton: Let all the world learn to give mortal man no greater power than they are
content they shall use, for use it they will…. It is necessary that all power that is on earth be
limited…. It is counted a matter of danger to the state to limit prerogatives, but it is a further
danger not to have them limited.
• People had the right, and the duty to rebel - IFF they could prove that their rulers were violating
the good they had been pointed to serve - for the sake of God’s covenant.
• Anglican establishment was seen as a threat to religious freedom and liberty because it was
associated with the British Crown.
• William and Mary established the Anglican Church (Church of England) in Maryland, South
Carolina, and New York City - and later North Carolina, and Georgia (weak though it was in
those states).
• Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (1701) mainly tries to convert Quakers,
Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, and Reformed.
• In established states, only members of the C of E could hold office.
• Licensure of teachers by Bishop of London.
• Attempts to thwart the establishing of denominational colleges.
• Attempts to take over King’s College, Harvard, Yale.
• Intimidation of printers in NYC.
• Attempts to send Bishops related to Stamp Act - funds used to support Bishops.
• John Adams: “If Parliament could tax us, they could establish the Church of England with all its
creeds, articles, tests, ceremonies, and tithes; and prohibit all churches as conventicles and
schism shops.”

88. •Ths 1762 cartoon depicts
the angry response of Boston
Congregationalists to the
specter of an Anglican bishop
being appointed by the King.
Note the blend of civil and
religious rebellion in the
banner (left): “No Lords,
Spiritual or Temporal in New
England.” The note near the
rat reads “Shall they be
obliged to maintain Bishops
that cannot maintain
themselves?” How does this
statement relate to the cry
“No taxation without
representation”?

89. The Enlightenment
• Reason as an authoritative guide
– To virtue
– To understanding the world
• Optimistic view of humanity and history
• Two propositions
– Present age more enlightened than the past
– We understand humanity and nature best through
natural faculties

90. Consequences of Enlightenment for
Religion and Culture
• Toleration
• Rejection of authority
• Turn to natural world to express religion

91. Deism and Evangelicalism Link Arms
• 2 Historical Roots:
• Latitudinarianism: 1600’s, men of
“latitude” try to overcome divisions with
only essential and mutually agreed
articles of faith:
– God exists and is worthy of worship
– Virtue is best form of worship
– Repentance of wrongdoing
– Future rewards and punishments
– (Americans add) God’s providence
over nations.
• Enlightenment: Newton’s Principia,
Age of Reason, Descartes and
Rationalism
• Freemasonry
“Nature and Nature’s Law lay hid in night.
God said ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.”
-- Alexander Pope

92. Role of Clergy: “Preaching up the
Revolution”
• Covenant meant more responsibilities than privileges:
– Could not ask for God’s help to defeat the Brits.
– The situation was seen as more due to infidelity of colonists, not to British
Crown.
• Continental Congress recommends days of “public humiliation, fasting,
and prayer”
• “We may with united hearts and voices unfeignedly confess and
deplore our many sins and offer up our joint supplications to the all-
wise, omnipotent, and merciful Disposer of all events; humbly
beseeching him to forgive our iniquities, to remove our present
calamities, to avert those desolating judgments with which we are
threatened (1775).”

93. Religious Freedom
• Fast following independence, like New
York, laws are repealed that “may be
construed to establish or maintain any
particular denomination of Christians.”
• Virginia’s attempt in 1784 for a “general
assessment” to be distributed impartially
to all churches.
• Refuted by James Madison in Memorial
and Remonstrance (1784) - because the
state would then have to decide what a
“Christian” church is.
• 1786: “Bill for Establishing Religious
Freedom” is passed by Virginia
Assembly
• Connecticut (1818), New Hampshire
(1819), Massachusetts (1833) come into
line with the First Amendment - added
because Constitution would not pass the
Convention

94. Linking Arms….
• Reform Theologians distinguish natural revelation from special revelation
• Deists mostly upper class intellectuals - instrumental attitude to special
revelation - it made simple people civilized and pious.
• Deists and Evangelicals agreed on “natural religion” and “natural revelation”
through reason. Technical Arts were to be recovered through science to help
establish the Kingdom of Heaven.
• Jonathan Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) - written just after the
Glorious Revolution (1688) refers to consent of governed, natural rights, liberty,
property, etc.
• Deistic attacks on “special revelation” came later - after the Revolution.
• This alliance is a significant historical theme in American History.

95. Thomas Jefferson
• 1743-1826
• Product of the
Enlightenment
– Reason and nature are
preeminent
• Deism
• Natural Rights
– Life
– Liberty
– Pursuit of happiness
– Including freedom of
religion

96. Separation of Church and State
• Bill for Religious Freedom
– Written 1777
– Submitted 1779
– Passed 1786
• God created our minds to be free – even the right to
be free from religion
– Jefferson and Jesus
• The Teachings of Jesus
• The Jefferson Bible
• “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.” -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the
State of Virginia, 1781-82
• Level playing field for religions

97. Separation of Church and State
• First Amendment
– Guarantee of religious liberty and the prohibition of
federal religious establishment
– It is open for states to establish churches
• Massachusetts and Connecticut were Congregationalist
states
• Their representatives voted for the first amendment
• Modern, market economy – even for religion
• Slavery
– An economic compromise
– Set-up for hypocrisy

98. The 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.”

99. Giving the Revolution Religious
Significance
• Millennialism
– Revolution preparing the way for Christ’s
return
– Becomes a common way to think about
America and its wars
– Associating God with America’s cause

100. Like this one,
many battle
flags of the
American
Revolution
carried
religious
inscriptions.

101. Revolution’s Effect on Religion
• Churches experienced decline
• Political crisis allowed the advancement of secularized
thought
– Emphasis on political issues
• Churches respond to independence
– Some had to reconstitute
– Some experienced significant changes
• All groups provided with new opportunities

102. General Summary of
Independence
• Religious freedom
• Separation of Church and State
• Denominationalism
• Voluntaryism (Volunteerism)
• Patriotism

103. From Revolution to Civil War
• Perceived decline in church attendance after
Revolutionary War
• Blamed on Deism
• Congregationalists and Presbyterians join
forces: Plan of Union 1801
• Unitarianism
• Universalism
• Transcendentalism
• Voluntary Societies

104. More Denominations and Lights
James Freeman made pastor of King’s Chapel, Boston in 1787. He
is Unitarian:
– Word of God is “written for mankind in the language of men” - just like
that of other books.
– Jesus is divine, but not the same as God, moral exemplar.
– Optimistic view of human nature, an “essential sameness between God
and man.”
• American Unitarian Association formed in 1825
• 1782, Charles Chauncy’s Salvation for All Men
– Universalism is also anti-trinitarian
– Mostly poorer people, competes with Methodists

105. Horace Bushnell as Mediator
• Both Conservative and Liberal
• “self-governed” and “free”
individuals balanced with family,
community, church, nation.
• Christian Nurture (1847)
• Children can “grow up Christian
and never know himself as being
otherwise.”
• Danger of Revivalism is that the
ordinary operations of God’s
grace get “swallowed up and lost
in the extraordinary”
• Convulsive conversion experience
should not be the only entrance
into Christian life.

106. Horace Bushnell
(1802-1876)
• Social context can transmit evil as well as
virtue. This prepares the way for New and
Liberal Theology.
• “…nothing was ever achieved in the way of
great and radical change without some
degree of excitement; and if any one
expects to carry on the cause of salvation
by a steady rolling on the same dead level,
and fears continually lest his axles wax hot
and kindle into a flame [that person] is too
timorous to hold the reins of the Lord’s
chariot.”
• Revivalism reconciled to ordered life of
family, church and community.
• Trinity applies to revealed God, not to the
ultimate reality of God (Unitarian critique is
resolved; nature and supernatural bridged,
but not conflated)

107. “Benevolent Empire”
… after the Second Great Awakening:
1. Role of Women
2. Missionary Societies
3. Voluntary Societies
4. Education
5. New Traditions

108. 1. Role of Women
• Conversion experience provides release from the
constraints of male domination.
• Witnessing or public professions of faith after
conversion contributed to woman’s sense of self-
confidence.
• Charles Finney used women to organize revivals.
• Auxiliaries
• Female Education
• Woman’s suffrage

109. 2. Missionary Societies
• Voluntary societies long part of American civic culture
- Boston Tea Party, committees of public safety, etc.
• New York Missionary Society, 1796, for Indian
missions.
• Missionary Society of Connecticut, 1798, for
missionizing the West.
• Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, 1821, by
Episcopalians
• At first, Missionary Societies are local and regional….

110. …But they grow:
• First societies focused on establishing ‘conferences’, then
churches.
• Bible and tract societies.
• Sunday school societies.
• Educational societies to build schools.
• Humanitarian societies
• Orestes Brownson complains that “matters have come to
such a pass that a peaceable man can hardly venture to
eat or drink, to go to bed or get up, to correct his children
or kiss his wife without the guidance and sanction of some
society.”

111. “Concentrated action is
powerful action” - American
Bible Society
• Protestants understand their mutual interests
• Revivals emphasize “disinterested
benevolence” (Samuel Hopkins) as balm for
sin as selfishness.
• Christian perfectionism (due to conversion)
tied to older Puritan ideas
• Millennial hopes of assisting in God’s plan - to
re-make society, not just the individual.

112. 3…And they keep growing into
National Voluntary Societies
• American Bible Society, 1818
• American Education Society, 1816
• American Sunday School Union, 1824
• American Temperance Society, 1826
• American Peace Society, 1828
• American Antislavery Society, 1833
“Benevolent Empire”

113. 4. Education
• 516 colleges founded prior to Civil War - almost all with
religious affiliation.
• Andover Theological Seminary, 1808, founded to improve
ministers’ preparation.
• Troy Female Seminary, 1821
• Mt. Holyoke Woman’s Seminary, 1837 (Mary Lyon)
• Lincoln University, 1854, for educating Blacks.
• Wilberforce College in Ohio, 1856, also for Blacks.
• Oberlin, 1832
– “universal reform”
– Took students who were ejected from Lane Theological Seminary
for being Anti-slavery

114. 5. New Traditions
1. Unitarians and Universalists
2. Rationalism
3. Transcendentalism

115. 1. Unitarians and Universalists
• Precursers
• Division
• Theology
• Association

116. Precursers: Moving away
from Jonathan Edwards /
Calvinism
Charles Chauncy (1705-1787) -
opponent of Jonathan Edwards
advances Arminianism into
Universalism: “Salvation for All
Men”
Elhanan Winchester (1751-1797),
Baptist minister turned
Universalist contends that a
moral and loving God would not
rest until all his creatures had
been gathered to his Kingdom.

117. Unitarians and Universalists:
Division
• James Freeman ordained
by Congregationalists in
1787 - orthodox doctrine
ignored.
• 1805: Henry Ware (public
liberal) elected to
Professorship at Harvard
• 1808: Andover Seminary
founded
• 1815: Memiors of
Theophilus Lindsey
published - with letters of
specific Congregationalist
ministers who were
privately Unitarian. Scandal
and war of pamphlets

118. “Unitarian Christianity” - 1819
• Unitarianism far more radical departure than
Universalism from Congregationalism.
• William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)
– Calvinist dim view of human status replaced with
emphasis on human morality, rationality, and freedom to
choose among Christian doctrines and promises.
– Rejects “irrational and unscriptural “Doctrine of Trinity for
Unity of God.
– Old Testament supplanted by New.
– “We accept that which is clearly taught in the Scriptures,
though we do not attach equal importance to all the books
in this collection.” - 1819.
– “…that man, having sinned against an infinite Being, has
contracted infinite guilt, and is consequently exposed to
an infinite penalty…is unscriptural and absurd.” - Jesus as
moral ideal, no atonement.
• Not many Unitarian churches outside of Boston, but
very influential for its ideas and liberal values.

119. Association
• 1820 Courts rule that
Church property
vested in “parish”
• 1825; Formation of the
American Unitarian
Association
• 125 churches, 100 in
Massachusetts
• Universalists more
popular among lower
classes and in the
West.
• Combined in 1961 as
UUA.

120. 2. Rationalism
• Deism lost momentum as a formal religious
option in the 1800’s.
• Science and Enlightenment theories about
nature, physics, and the heavens appear
regularly in newspapers and magazines.
• Engagement with science at the popular level
• Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, 1859
• “Transcendental Club” meets in Boston at the
home of Unitarian pastor George Ripley.

121. 3. Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) is
ordained (Unitarian) minister of Boston’s
Second Church in 1829.
Resigns 3 years later to pursue what will
become called “Transcendentalism”.
Disappointed by sectarian religion,
materialism, and expansionism.
Places emphasis on intuition, self-reliance,
and inner self/soul.
“The materialist insists on facts, on history,
on the force of circumstances, and, the
animal wants of man; the idealist on the
power of Thought and Will, on
inspiration, on miracle, on individual
culture.” - 1843

122. Utopian
communities.
Fruitlands lasted 7
months, Brook Farm
7 yrs. Hopedale 14
years.
Fruitlands and Brook Farm

123. James Freeman Clarke (1810-
1888)
• Harvard Divinity School graduate,
founded Church of the Disciples in
1841
• Fascinated with Oriental religions,
wrote Ten Great Religions
• Orestes Brownson (1803-1876),
Presbyterian, then Universalist,
agnostic for awhile, founds Society
for Christian Union and Progress in
1836 (abolishes pew ownership,
preaches to working class), then
ends up as Roman Catholic.
• Beginnings of Liberal Protestant
tradition

124. Nature Religion /
Conservationism
Transcendentalists against slavery,
Cherokee forced evacuations,
Mexican War. This is early
Liberalism.
Nature seen as organic, spontaneous
and free, not as mechanical or
ruled by law.
Relationship between religion, nature
and healing
English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(1772-1834) contributes to
Christian Romanticism -> Horace
Bushnell (1802-1876) becomes
theologian of Liberal Christianity
(“progressive orthodoxy”).
John Muir (1838-1914)
Nature Religion (Catherine Albanese)

125. Civil War Aftermath
• Both sides claimed God’s
guidance
• 1850-1860: 84.4% increase
in foreign born
• 1860-1870: 34.5% more.
• Modern Science becomes
terrible fact of American
culture.
• Industrialism and new centers
of power.
• Darwin’s On the Origin of
Species (1859)
• Herbert Spencer’s
evolutionism
• “Higher Criticism” of the Bible.

126. Theological Interpretations
• American experiment failed
• Providence was gone
• No one else to blame but
Americans
• Horace Bushnell and Phillip
Schaff, theologians echo
Lincoln in saying that it was
due to guilt; a trial designed
to aid the nation in fulfilling
not forfeiting destiny.
• Julia Ward Howe / Battle
Hymn of the Republic
(premillennialism): “…as he
died to make men holy, let us die to
make men free.”

127. Lincoln
War as Purification: “Sometimes it seems
necessary that we should be confronted with perils
which threaten us with disaster in order that we may
not get puffed up and forget him who has much work
for us yet to do.”
War = Punishment and progress:
“The Almighty has his own purposes…. If we shall
suppose that American slavery is one of those
offenses which, in the providence of God, must
needs come, but which, haveing continued through
his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that
he gives to both North And South this terrible war, as
the woe due to those by whom the offense came,
shall we discern therin any departure from divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always
ascribe to him?” --Second Inaugural Address

128. Lincoln, Bushnell, and Schaff sought to restore to the
American people their former bond of union, by returning
to the religious theme of God’s utter sovereignty - that the
Civil War itself was God’s will, still working in the history
of the nation.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God
gives us to see ther ight, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the n
ation’s wounds; to care for him sho shall have borne the battle and for his widow
and orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace
among ourselves, and with all nations.” -- closing words to the Second Inaugural
Address
An Attempt at Closure and Reconciliation

129. New Intellectual Climate
1. New scientific theories.
2. New Biblical Criticism
3. Awareness of World Religions

130. 1. New Scientific Theories
• Charles Lyell (Geology)
rewrites Genesis account
• Charles Darwin’s Origin of
Species (1859) accounts for
speciation
• Nebular Hypothesis
• Anthropogenesis
• Herbert Spencer’s Progress,
Its Law and Cause (1857)
popularizes and expands
evolutionism to history,
civilization, etc.

131. Darwin and More Science…
• Darwin went beyond mere descriptive science (induction) to
speculative theorizing (deduction)
• Darwinian evolution desacralized us humans (just another animal,
evolved not created)
• Threatened the doctrine of God’s providence
• Most of all - it seemed to threaten morality (men as beasts, survival of
fittest, might makes right, nihilism)
• Science even takes on our most personal sense of felt religious
experience:
– E. D. Starbuck’s Psychology of Religion (1899) - explains religious
experience in Psychological and social terms
– J. H. Leuba’s Psychological Study of Religion (1912) - more challenging to
religion
– William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) - finds a middle
ground for religious experience, denounces “medical reductionism”

132. 2. Higher Criticism of Bible
German Theologians: Friedrich
Schleiermacher (1768–1834), and
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872)
apply rational, naturalistic, and
historical principles to the Bible.
Multiple authors for Old Testament,
inconsistencies in New
Testament, Q-Source, redactions,
2 authors of Isaiah, etc.
Thomas F. Curtis’s The Human
Element in the Inspiration of the
Sacred Scriptures (1867)

133. Crisis of Faith!! • How to reconcile Darwinism and
Genesis?
• How to reconcile the doctrine of
Biblical inspiration with the errors
and contradictions revealed by
higher criticism?
• Major assumptions of Christian
faith not directly evident from Bible.
– Trinity
– Emancipation
– Salvation
• Protestants (sola scriptura) are
more threatened than Catholics
• Catholics have councils, the pope,
tradition, church fathers, and most
importantly, quadriga tradition of
Biblical interpretation.

134. Reaction to Higher Criticism
3 Responses:
1. Reject scientific methods (Conservatives,
Fundamentalists)
2. See Bible allegorically (Liberal Protestants,
Reform Jews)
3. Adapt central elements of tradition with
modern knowledge

135. The Conflict Model
(between Science and
Religion)
• Robert G Ingersoll: “the
notorious infidel”
– Lawyer, great orator, writer
– Some Mistakes of Moses
(1879)
– Why I am an Agnostic (1896)
• J. W. Draper History of the
Conflict Between Religion and
Science (1874)
• Andrew D. White History of the
Warfare of Science with
Theology (1896)

136. 3. World Religions
• James Freeman Clarke’s
Ten Great Religions (1871) -
21 editions - sympathetic
appraisal of other religions.
• 1892-1893: World’s
Parliament of Religions -
more than 150,000 people
attend.

137. Theological Responses to
these Challenges
The following responses become the dominant forces that shape
the intellectual culture of the 20th century
1. Protestant Liberalism - Focus of this
Chapter
2. Evangelicalism
3. Protestant Conservatism
4. Protestant Fundamentalism
5. Holiness-Pentecostal Movement
These are the MOST important terms to understand for
the entire course!!!

138. 1. Protestant Liberalism
• Henry Ward Beecher (Plymouth Congregational
Church in Brooklyn NY 1847-1887 and easily the
most prominent preacher of his time) warns that
ministers can not afford to become “apostles of
the dead past [by letting] the development of truth
run ahead of them.”
• “If ministers do not make their theological
systems conform to the facts as they are; if they
do not recognize what men are studying, the time
will not be far distant when the pulpit will be like a
voice crying in the wilderness…The providence of
God is rolling forward in a spirit of investigation
that Christian ministers must meet and join.”
• Many seminaries started adding elements of
science to their curricula.

139. Adaptation
and
Reconciliation
• Evolution is accommodated to
Christian Tradition intellectually
– John Fiske: “Evolution is God’s way
of doing things.” (Outline of Cosmic
Philosophy, 1874) believed that
human evolution had ended.
– James McCosh, president of
Princeton: “natural selection is the
product of supernatural design”
– Henry Drummond, Scottish
theologian, close friend of Dwight
Moody: Natural Law in the Spiritual
World (1883) was most thoughtful
and reassuring.

140. Christian Modernism
• If Evangelicals find continuity with Christian tradition
in the heart, Scientific Modernists would allow the
methods of science to determine what the core of the
Christian tradition would be.
• Shailer Mathews, Faith of Modernism (1924):
Modernism is “the use of the methods of modern
science to find, state, and use the permanent and
central values of inherited orthodoxy in meeting the
needs of a modern world.”
• Values of orthodoxy not ignored, but science
prioritized over tradition.
• Future is prioritized over the past.

141. More Christian Modernism
• “Science has conquered one field after another until now
it is entering the most complex, the most inaccessible,
and of all the most scared domain -- that of religion.” -- E.
D. Starbuck
• John D. Rockefeller founds a Baptist super-university in
Chicago - becomes center of the movement.
• Chicago approach to theology was sociohistorical: all
religious doctrines were the product of unique
circumstances, so they should be tested and applied “in
the same way that chemists and historians reach and
apply their conclusions…”
• Extremely influential
• American Institute of Sacred Literature

142. Modernity for America
Industrialization, the Gilded Age,
and the Social Gospel

143. Industrialization
• Before 1865: 62,000 patents issued
• 1865-1900: 637,000 patents issued!!
• Steal production and Bessemer converter
• Railroads and refrigerator cars
• Discovery of oil, tank cars, pipelines.
• Typewriter, transatlantic cable, telephone
• Electricity, light bulbs, motors
• Automobiles
• Motion pictures
• By 1894, the U.S. is by far the leading
manufacturing nation of the world.

144. Cultural/Religious
Responses to
Industrialization
1. Gender Issues
2. Cities and Churches
3. Gospel of Wealth
4. Social Gospel
5. The “Progressive”
Movement

145. 1. Gender
Issues
• All observers agree that
women more visible in
church than men from 1650’s
• 2/3 new church members
are women from Second G.
A.
• Women as “guardians of the
faith” - pious, nurturing,
moral exemplars in the
home.
• Jesus as servant, sacrifice,
submission to husband’s
authority
• Men tarnished by commerce
and politics

146. And the Guys??
• YMCA, Boston, 1851
• Fraternal Organizations 5.5
million by 1900 (1 out of
every 4 men)
– Odd Fellows (810,000)
– Freemasons (750,000)
– Knights of Pythias (475,000)
– Red Men (165,000)
• ‘Muscular Christianity’
– Anglo-saxon racism,
commerce, warfare, moral
reform, Billy Sunday, Oliver
Wendell Holmes

147. Billy Sunday (1862-1935)
• Father died in Civil War
• Chicago White Stockings
• Conversion in 1887; J. Wilbur
Chapman offers partnership
(Chicago) then dies.
• 1909 hires trombone player - big
show
• All local churches must invite;
huge “Tabernacle” must be built
(10-20,000 people); ; sawdust;
specifications! - bouncers,
ushers, hotel lodging, etc.
• Anti-booze; anti-prostitution -
very popular.Muscular Christianity
-speaks rural langauge
-super organized
-evil and immorality due to the
devil - “gotta fight’em!”

148. 2. Cities and Churches
• 1860-1890 4-50x
population added to cities.
• Institutional Churches
• Upper classes in
attendance
• City missions
• New methods
– Programs
– House to house visits
• Need for trained clergy

149. The Gilded Age
• Churches minister to the
affluent and wealthy -
especially in large urban
areas of the East.
• Churches wealthy
• Working classes largely
immigrants and
unchurched.
• “golden age of preaching”
• Indifference and support of
the status quo.

150. 3. The Gospel of Wealth
• Laissez-faire capitalism
of Adam Smith
• Smug self-satisfaction
of those who benefited
• Herbert Spencer and
Social Darwinism
• Lib. V. Cons. Catholics

151. Francis Wayland (1794-1865)
• Baptist Minister, 4th Pres. Brown
University
• The Elements of Moral Science
(1834) - wealth as Christianity
• The Elements of Political Economy,
(1837)
• “God intends that man should grow
rich.” - no charity.
• All scientific laws are God’s laws -
the poor are punished for their
idleness.
• Government should not regulate
economic relations in any way - it
would interfere with God’s justice…

152. Rockefeller and Industry
• Founds Baptist University
of Chicago in 1892
• Criticized for aggressive
tactics and suppression of
unions.
• Robber Barons
• Adam Smith, Francis
Wayland, Herbert Spencer
all supported unbridled
economic self-interest.
• “No man who is blessed with
health and willingness to work,
be his family large or small,
need come to the poor-house.”

153. Andrew Carnegie’s Gospel of
Wealth
• June 1889 issue of North
American Review: “the true
gospel concerning wealth
[which will] solve the problem of
the rich and the poor.”
• “sacredness” of private
property, free competition, and
free accumulation of wealth
• “…best for the race, because it
insures the survival of the fittest
in every department.”
• Philanthropy: “The man who
dies rich dies disgraced”

154. Russell Conwell (1843-
1925)
• Acres of Diamonds - sermon
delivered thousands of times
in tours all over the country -
“in your own backyards…”
• Everyone has a “duty to get
rich.”
• Popularizer of Gospel of
Wealth

156. From “Acres of Diamonds”…
"I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get
rich.... The men who get rich may be the most honest men
you find in the community. Let me say here clearly .. .
ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America
are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are
trusted with money. That is why they carry on great
enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is
because they are honest men. ... ... I sympathize with the
poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized
with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God
has punished for his sins ... is to do wrong.... let us
remember there is not a poor person in the United States
who was not made poor by his own shortcomings. ..."

157. 4. The Social Gospel
• Roots:
– Thomas Chalmers, Scottish theologian/philanthropist
– Frederick Denison Maurice & Charles Kingsley’s “Christian Socialism”
– Henry M. Dexter’s The Moral Influence of Manufacturing Towns (1848)
– German and Swiss Socialists
• Ministers tried to confront the indifference and social ignorance of
congregations by confronting them with facts of poverty, squalor,
injustice.
• Aligned with the Progressive Movement in politics
• Social justice, urban poor, and the labor movement
• Social activism
• Social Settlements modeled after Toynbee Hall in London (1884)
– Jane Addams founds Hull House in Chicago

158. Charles Sheldon (1857-1946)
• Minister of congregational Church
of Topeka, Kansas
• In His Steps, or What Would Jesus
Do? (1897)
• Parable-Novel about the revolution
that occurred in a small city when
members of a single congregation
resolved to live for a single year in
full accord with the teaching of
Jesus.
• One of 3 or 4 of the greatest books
in U.S. History.

159. Washington Gladden (1836-1918)
• Congregational minister, Columbus
Ohio.
• Forced civil authorities to enforce
Blue Laws
• Social and political activist
• Elected to Columbus city council
1900
• Fought corruption
• Civil ownership of utilities
• Equal rights for blacks, but still
thought they were inferior…
• Immigrants and Catholics? - prone
to laziness and alcoholism….

160. Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918)
• 1897 - faculty at Rochester
Theological Seminary
• 1907 - Christianity and the
Social Crisis
• Christian Socialist
• Wanted to appeal to
working classes
• 1918 A Theology for the
Social Gospel
• Provided theological basis
for social gospel

161. 5. The “Progressive”
Movement
• Theodore Roosevelt’s
“Square Deal” and Bull
Moose” platform.
• “Onward Christian
Soldiers…”
• Muckrakers expose
corruption
• Middle-class idealism
• Temperance
• T-totalers

162. General Summary so far:
• “The Age of Crusades”
• On the one hand, Darwin encouraged liberal
forms of Christianity that emphasized social
reform over individual salvation.
• On the other hand, Darwin’s ideas supported
the Gospel of Wealth, and could even justify
racism and the idea of superior cultures -
especially Anglo-Saxon Capitalism.
• WWI brings all of this “Age” to an end - in one
Great Crusade: to make the world safe for
democracy.

163. After WWI
• Interchurch World Movement (1919-1920)
– “Win the world for Christ in this generation!”
– “…the complete evangelization of all of life.”
– Complete failure
• By 1925, church attendance, Sunday school enrollments, and
missionary giving was declining.
• Disenchantment and Fracture
– Failure of Versailles
– Strikes, economic recession of 1919, corrupt business
– Weariness with crusades
– Weariness with discipline imposed by War
– Scandals of the Harding administration
– Guys returning from war
– Women working in industries
• Mostly contribute to non-Liberal movements (Christian
Conservatives, Fundamentalists, Holiness-Pentecostalism, etc. -
discussed in later chapters)

164. Protestant Liberalism in
Recent Times
• 1948 World Council of
Churches
• Ecumenical movement
• 1908 Federal Council of
Churches of Christ
• Consultation on Church
Union 1962
• “liberal consensus”
– Civil rights
– Welcoming Church Movement
– Ordination for women and gays

165. Albanese on Decline of Liberal
Christianity
• Today it has faded into the background: “If liberal
Protestantism faced the danger of dissolving its boundaries
and merging with American culture-in-general, it also had
significantly shaped that culture” (107).
• Reasons for decline:
– Urbanization of American Society
– Separation of public culture from religion (secularization)
– Mobility, divorce rates, low birth rates
– Pluralism
– Baby boomer individualism
– Ecumenical movement
– Civil Rights movement politicizes the Social Gospel
– “Welcoming Movement” toward gays
– Feminism

166. Summary and Overview
• Protestant Reformation set stage for modernity:
– Individualism
– Preaching the Word
– Call for moral action in the world
• Puritan Calvinism moderated by Arminian ideas, pluralism,
separation of church and state to produce Christian Liberalism,
etc:
– Unitarians, Universalists, Transcendentalists and Christian Romanticism
• Protestants either affirmed culture:
– Evangelical liberalism and Gospel of Wealth and Modernism
• Or they rejected modern culture:
– Fundamentalism and Holiness-Pentecostalism
• Or they sought to transform culture:
– Social Gospel and Progressivism (Obama)