Puritanism and Patriotism

I've just finished re-reading a relatively recent work on the Puritans and how they've impacted American history basically since the beginning of the earliest colonies. Puritans were for reform, and they tended to have a high view of America's covenantal destiny should they live up to their end of their relationship to God. I read this book to get some context for the revision of my dissertation, hopefully for publication. George McKenna noted that a nearly unbroken strain of American Puritanical thought has continued through to the present day, first through the areas the Puritans inhabited in the burned-over district in New York, the Western Reserve of Ohio, and Michigan, as they expanded to look for new lands to inhabit. The Puritan worldview then continued throughout the North during the Civil War and on through the reformers of the Progressive Movement. The Puritan thread then followed through the New Deal, after which it switched to the unlikely amalgam of Catholics and Southern Evangelical Protestants, both of whom took over the idea of the US as a chosen nation.

While McKenna drew upon a wide range of personalities, including such disparate characters as Jonathan Edwards, the Transcendentalist writers of the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln, Walter Rauschenbusch, and Ronald Reagan. The thing that tied these people together was the optimism that things could get better and their reforming impulse. They also tended to have a belief in a messianic destiny for the American nation that could be lost if the people of America did not follow this destiny. McKenna, although not the first to describe it, noted the importance of the political jeremiad in calling the people back to the straight and narrow from their wanderings off the righteous path. McKenna's book is well worth reading and will make the reader think about how much his or her ideas of America might reach way back into the past.

McKenna, George. The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007.

The Rise of Evangelicalism

I'm currently reading The Rise of Evangelicalism, a 2004 work by Mark Noll that looks at evangelical history to about 1800. While I'm only about 70 pages in, Noll makes a few important arguments in this general overview of the movement. One of the arguments that is not really common in evangelical circles is the importance of High Church Anglicans in the movement. However, Noll points out that the parents of John and Charles Wesley were High Church Anglicans and that the more famous Wesleys attended Oxford to become Anglican ministers.

Noll points out a convergence of Puritan (dissenting Anglican), Pietist (German groups like the Moravians), and High Church Anglicans that led to the emergence of the Evangelical movement. Many who were concerned with a church hierarchy and a national church had a problem with the evangelicals. The early evangelicals tended to favor use of the Bible over tradition and a sort of lay piety that encouraged lay meetings on a regular basis. It is easy to see why an established church might have problems with this.

Two thoughts come to mind. 1) The clergy may have been worried about their place in society. 2) The clergy may have been worried about the new and unique doctrines that might arise in such an environment. The first concern did not really come to pass, at least in American church history. Religious sentiment actually increased after what Nathan Hatch referred to as the "Democratization of Religion." However, the second concern did, in fact, happen. The Second Great Awakening is widely considered the biggest revival in American church history. Some of the ministers were quite orthodox in their beliefs. It is important to note that some unorthodox and heretical groups came out of this movement.  I'm interested to see the major figures that Noll notes in the rest of the book, as it is more of a general historical overview than a narrow look at one group or movement.

Today Is July 4--Founding Fathers and Thoughts on Theological Liberalism

Well, it's another July 4, where many people will celebrate the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain.  Of course, declaring independence and actually winning it are two different things.  Perhaps we should actually celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 as our official independence day.  That's not as fun, though, because it took far less in terms of guts.

There is frequently a debate over whether or not the founding fathers of the nation were all evangelicals or all Deists.  I've argued before that it's difficult to lump the founding fathers into one easy group.  There were founding fathers from both groups.  The link above is a post from last your that discusses a bit about John Witherspoon, a minister who signed the Declaration of Independence.  Baylor professor Thomas Kidd wrote about the top five forgotten evangelical founders this week.  The good thing about his posts are that they are actually scholarly and written by an expert in early American religious history, unlike some other "experts" that try even Thomas Jefferson out to be an evangelical, rather than the Deist he actually was.  People who study American church history should not just cherry pick documents that seem to argue what they want.  It's important to look at a person's entire body of work. 

Another post this week that interested me was a discussion about historians of liberal Protestantism, which deals with the twentieth century.  There is quite a bit about evangelical religion in this period.  My own work deals with the subject of evangelical history.  The question arises why there are not as many historians of liberal Protestants.  A definition is in order, liberal Protestants tend to be liberal in the theological sense.  While they frequently have liberal leanings in a political sense, the major emphasis is theological liberalism, at least as far as I understand.

Perhaps the answer to this question is the fact that theologically liberal Protestants are much less influential in American society because they are a shrinking demographic in society.  Some evangelical denominations have lost members and there is a growing number of non-religious people in America today, but these losses are nothing when compared to the influence that the mainline denominations once had in American society.

Much of this could probably be explained because of the non-supernatural bent of these liberal Protestants.  For example, if Jesus was just another man who had a special spark of the divine, there's not much to differentiate him from the descriptions that other religions have of their founders.  If he actually resurrected from the dead and was God and man as the New Testament describes, on the other hand, then Christianity holds infinitely more importance.  I think this difference is the reason for much of the decline of liberal Protestantism.  If Jesus isn't really who the Bible claims, why not just become a hedonist and skip church?

Book Nearly Finished

Today, I got a proof of my upcoming book.  The book's title is The Old Church on Walnut Street: A Story of Immigrants and Evangelicals.  The immigrants in the story are Norwegians that flooded into Dakota Territory/North Dakota in the late nineteenth century.  The evangelicals are related to the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana) movement.  The book should be coming out in the next few weeks, but I though I would give a preview of the first couple of paragraphs from the introduction. Enjoy:

In early March 1944 World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific, and accounts from the front lines and the home front dominated the pages of the Grand Forks Herald.  A late winter blizzard swept through the Northern Great Plains, and the paper maintained a daily update on road conditions as North Dakotans dug their way out the snow.  Along with these headlines, the March 10 edition included a picture and caption that recorded smoke billowing from the Grand Forks Church of God as firemen worked to contain the flames.[i]  (See figure 1)  The building at 224 Walnut Street sustained extensive damage, but the church, undaunted, decided to repair the structure, which remained in service for the congregation until after the Grand Forks flood of 1997.  The flood accomplished what the 1944 fire did not.  Citing an unsound structure, the City of Grand Forks scheduled the old building for demolition in early 2012. 

The old Trinity Lutheran Church, built around 1905,[ii] was not terribly unique in design.  Although it was the last of the wood-framed churches in Grand Forks, many similar wood-framed church buildings continue to dot much of the American landscape, hearkening back to an idyllic time in the nation’s history.  Trinity Lutheran was not an imposing landmark on the city streetscape.  The church tended to blend in with the surrounding homes in the neighborhood, and the simplicity of the structure was very much in line with that of its congregation.  It was not the oldest church in town.  St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church has expanded over time, but it still resides at the same lot it occupied in the early 1880s and the congregation it serves is the oldest in town.  However, Trinity Lutheran and the two assemblies that worshiped within its walls were an important link to local and national history.  The church at 224 Walnut Street was a tangible reminder of the immigrant struggles of early settlers on the Northern Plains as they attempted to integrate into their new homeland.  This connection to early Norwegian settlers made the building important to Grand Forks history. 

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[i] Grand Forks Herald, March 10, 1944.

[ii] The church first appeared on city fire insurance maps in August 1906.  The records available at United Lutheran Church do not indicate when the church was built.  There were earlier churches, but they have either moved or united with other bodies.

Evangelical Voters and the South Carolina Primary

Evangelical voters make up a very sizable portion of the electorate in several Southern and Midwestern states.  In my last post, I pointed out that the endorsement of Rick Santorum by several evangelical leaders signaled a shift in attitudes.  Apparently, that endorsement changed few minds. 

The polls have closed, and the people of South Carolina have spoken.  South Carolina is a state with many evangelicals, and exit polls indicated that 65% of the people that voted today claimed to be evangelical Christians.  Apparently, that whole Santorum endorsement thingie didn't really work out too terribly well for the former Senator from Pennsylvania. 

One thing is for sure according to the exit polls from both South Carolina and Iowa, evangelicals are still not overly enthused about voting for a Mormon for president, as a pastor's endorsement of Rick Perry in October predicted.  Romney got 14% of the evangelical vote in Iowa, and his support rose to only 22% in SC, in spite of the dropping out of self-proclaimed evangelicals Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, who combined for 20% of the evangelical vote in Iowa.  Only 21% of evangelicals voted for Santorum in SC, in spite of the endorsement by some of their prominent leaders.  This is not the biggest surprise, however.

The biggest surprise, in my opinion, coming out of the South Carolina primary was the number of evangelicals who supported Newt Gingrich.  44% of evangelicals supported the former Speaker of the House, while only the 22% mentioned above supported Romney.  For non-evangelicals, Romney got 38% of the vote, while Gingrich only got 33%. 

Christianity emphasizes personal righteousness.  Evangelicals tend to pay serious lip service to this idea.  Only 18% of the voters in SC claimed that strong moral character was the main trait that they were looking for in a candidate.  If all of the these people were evangelicals, 47% find moral character as a secondary consideration to beating Barack Obama or someone having the right experience (Harry Truman did not have the right experience, but most historians and laymen consider him well above average when it comes to leadership).  While I understand that people can change and that there is redemption, I personally have to question the judgment of a serial adulterer who was kicked out of a Congress controlled by his own party for ethics charges.  The average person on the street considers Congressman/woman and ethics as an oxymoron, and this very body, Congress, kicked the Speaker out for ethics, all while his party had a solid majority.  His dealings with Fannie and Freddie have also come under fire.  That's not even mentioning the allegations his wife brought up this week.

But, hey, that's apparently better than having a Mormon as presidential candidate.

Free Resource for Finding Recent Literature on Church History

While recently reading The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship by George Marsden, the book made me aware of an attempt by evangelical scholars to get together for learning and encouragement.  Some evangelical scholars formed an organization known as the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals.  Wheaton College houses the Institute and hosts its website. The leadership of this organization includes some heavy hitters in the field of evangelical/fundamentalist history such as Marsden himself and Mark Noll to name a couple, so it is by no means a group of dubious scholarship.

The activities of the Institute include the holding of regional symposiums and national conferences on topics of interest to evangelical historians.  The website includes short biographical information on some of the leading figures in evangelical and fundamentalist history--including theologians, pastors, evangelists, and song writers.  Of particular interest to readers interested in some of the more recent scholarship on American evangelicals is the quarterly publication, the Evangelical Studies Bulletin.  The Bulletin includes a listing of recent dissertations, scholarly articles, and books on topics of interest to the Institute's constituency.  This particular newsletter is published on a quarterly basis, and the most recent editions are not made available for download immediately.  However, the Spring 2010 edition is already available for download in a PDF format for the general public's perusal.

There are a number of free tools available on the internet that are beneficial for those studying church history.  I hope to inform others of these sites as I run across them.  If any readers have any sites that they know of, feel free to let me know, and I will pass them on.