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“The True American Union” of Church and State: The Reconstruction of the Theocratic Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

James Fulton Maclear
James Fulton Maclear
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Duluth
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Extract

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

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1959 , pp. 41 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1959

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References

1. Humphrey, Heman, Miscellaneous Discourses and Reviews (Amherst: J. S. C. Adams, 1834), pp. 128–129.Google Scholar

2. Throughout this essay “theocracy” is used in this original sense. The use or the word to suggest clericalism has no place in this paper. For the shaping of the New England theocracy see especially Miller, Perry, The Establishment of Orthodoxy in Massachusetts (Cambridge: Harvard, 1933).Google Scholar The allusion to Norton is drawn from Norton, John, The Heart of N-Englaund Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation (Cambridge: Samuel Greene, 1659), p. 57.Google Scholar

3. In this essay attention is given exclusively to Massachusetts and Connecticut. New Hampshire provided for public support to religion until 1819, but its history on this issue was complicated and its intellectual leadership for the refashioning of the Puritan tradition was not significant. For the New Hampshire situation see Stokes, Anson Phelps, Church and State in the United States (New York: Harper, 1950), I, 431–432.Google Scholar

4. Miller, p. 260, quoting Hooker, Thomas, A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (London, 1848)Google Scholar, pt. IV, p. 57. For discussion of basic English Puritan views of church and state, see Pearson, A. F. Scott, Churcin and State (Cambridge: University Press, 1928).Google Scholar

5. Shurtleff, Nathaniel B. (ed.), Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: William White, 1854), III, 240;Google ScholarFundamental Orders of Connecticut (New Haven: Yale, 1934), p. 3Google Scholar; Records of. … Massachusetts Bay, I, 87Google Scholar; Coons, P. W., The Achievement of Religious Liberty in Connecticut (New Haven: Yale, 1936), pp. 2, 8.Google Scholar

6. See Meyer, Jacob C., Church and State in Massachusetts 1740–1833 (Cleveland: Western Reserve, 1930), pp. 1–132.Google Scholar

7. Stokes, I, 423–424; Backus, Isaac, A History of New England with Particutar Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists (Newton: Backus Historical Society, 1871), II, 201.Google Scholar

8. Backus, Isaac, Government and Liberty Described (Boston: Powars and Willis, 1778), p. 6.Google Scholar For the Baptists generally in New England, see Meyer, pp. 32–68. Baekus' History is still useful.

9. For this development, see especially Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard, 1953);Google ScholarBaldwin, Alice M., The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (Durham: Duke, 1928);Google ScholarMorais, Herbert M., Deism in Eighteenth Century America (New York: Columbia, 1934);Google ScholarWright, Benjamin F., A men can Interpretations of Natural Laze (Cambridge: Harvard, 1931), pp. 13–99.Google Scholar

10. For the rise of New England Republicanism, see Robinson, William A., Jeffersonian Democracy in New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916)Google Scholar, especially pp. 128–150; Purcell, Richard J., Connecticut in Transition 1775–1818 (Washington: American Historical Association, 1918), pp. 227–298.Google Scholar A good example of the fusion of the sects with the Republicans can be seen in Dodge, Nehemiah, A Discourse Delivered at Lebanon in Connecticut on the Fourth of March 1805 (Norwich: Sterry and Porter, 1805).Google ScholarGreene, L. F. (ed.), The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland (New York: G. W. Wood, 1845), pp. 118–119.Google Scholar The quotation comes from Leland's Virginia career, but represents his later attitude as well.

11. Backns, History, II, 202.

12. Stokes, I, 387–392.

13. [Dwight, Timothy], President Dwight's Decisions of Questions Discussed by the Senior Class in Yale College in 1813 and 1814 (New York: Jonathan Leavitt, 1833), p. 87.Google Scholar

14. Insight into this development will be found in Nuttall, Geoffrey F., The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1947)Google Scholar and in Hudson, Winthrop S., “Denominationalism as a Basis for Ecumenicity: A Seventeenth-Century Conception,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 (03, 1955), pp. 32–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an example of these ideas in seventeenth-century English Congregationalism, see Burroughes, Jeremiah, lrenicum (London: H. Dawiman, 1646).Google Scholar Cromwell's Establishment attempted to implement this conception.

15. Humphrey, pp. 404–405; Stiles, Ezra, The United States Elevated to Glory and Honour (Worcester, Massachusetts: Isaiah Thomas, 1785), p. 124.Google Scholar Note also Cotton Mather at the beginning of the century. See e.g. Manductio ad Ministerium (Boston: Thomas Hancock, 1726), pp. 115–128.Google Scholar

16. Beecher, Lyman, Works (Boston: J. P. Jewett, 1852–1853), II, 124–126.Google Scholar Beecher felt, even as he spoke, that the system was gone beyond recall. Morse, Jedidiah, A Sermon Exhibiting the Present Dangers (Charlestown: Samuel Etheridge, 1799), p. 21.Google Scholar

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19. Dwight, pp. 238, 111; Charles, Beecher (ed.), Autobiography, Correspondence, Etc. of Lyman Beecher, D.D. (New York: Harper, 1864), I, 396.Google Scholar

20. Stokes, I, 425.

21. Beecher, , Works, II, 92;Google Scholar Dwight, pp. 87–88. For a particularly positive statement of this argument, note Beeeher, Works, II, 142–143: “The religious and civil order of this State commenced their existence together and together they will live or expire. One was made for the other, or rather one was made by the other. Without the religious order to form the conscience and establish the fear of the Lord, our civil institutions which have stood almost two centuries, could not have endured a year. Let the ancient churches in this State, one after another, he broken down, and the doctrines which have purified and cheered them cease to be heard, and soon Connecticut will be Connecticut no more.”

22. Dwight, p. 88.

23. Beecher, , Works II, 106, 63, 95.Google Scholar

24. Purcell, pp. 336–345.

25. Channing, William E., A Sermon Preached at the Annual Election May 26, 1830 (Boston: Dutton and Went- worth, 1830), p. 32.Google Scholar

26. Meyer, pp. 160–220.

27. Beecher, , Autobiography, I, 344.Google Scholar Some allowance should perhaps be made for Beecher's weakness for self-dramatization. When the news of Dwight's death was brought to Beecher in the pulpit, he raised his hands and “said, with a burst of tears, as if he beheld the translation, ‘My father! my father! the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof! ’ The congregation, with an electric impulse, rose to their feet, and niany eyes were bathed in tears.” Ibid., pp 330–331.

28. Ibid., p. 344.

29. Beecher, , Works, II, 218, 234Google Scholar; Taylor, Nathaniel W., A Sermon Addressed to the Legislature of the State of Connecticut (New Haven: A. H. Maltby, 1823), pp. 34–36.Google Scholar

30. Humphrey, p. 103; Bacon, Leonard, An Address before the New England Society of the City of New York (New York: Ezra Collier, 1839), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; Bushnell, Horace, The Fathers of New England (New York: George P. Putnam. 1850), p. 20.Google Scholar

31. Beecher, , Antobiography, I, 344;Google Scholar Leland, pp. 580–581, 670; Reed, Andrew and Matheson, James, A Narrative of the Visit to the American Churches by the Deputation from the Congregational Union of England & Wales (London: Jackson and Walford, 1835), II, 141.Google Scholar

32. Beecher, , Works, II, 276.Google Scholar

33. Humphrey, p. 177.

34. Sprague, W. B., The Claims of Past and Future Generations on Civil Rulers (Boston: True and Greene, 1825), p. 9.Google Scholar

35. Park, Edwards A., The Indebtedness of the State to the Clergy (Boston: Button, 1851), pp. 53–54.Google Scholar

36. Stuart, Moses, Miscellanies (Andover: Allen, Morrill, and Wardwell, 1846), p. 314.Google Scholar Humphrey also taught an indirect influence, but made it clear that this was no adoption of the Baptist principle of separation. He complained bitterly of the opposition to “imbuing the laws of the state with the spirit of Christianity.” “You are reproached for not resting satisfied with mere religious toleration. … and if you venture to intimate that the government of a Christian people ought to respect and countenance religious institutions, or at least not to frown upon them, you are most charitably accused of being actuated by ambition and motives of worldly gain, rather than by Christian principle.” Humphrey, pp. 171–172.

37. Beecher, , Works, I, 337–338.Google Scholar

38. Ibid.. II, 279.

39. Humphrey, p. 135; Bacon, p. 22. See also Beecher, , Works, I, 176, 189–190.Google Scholar

40. Stuart, Moses, A Sermon Delivered before His Excellency Levi Lincoln Esq. Governor (Boston: True and Greene, 1827), pp. 14–15;Google Scholar [Webster, Daniel], Mr. Webster's Speech in Defence of the Christian Ministry, and in Favor of the Instruction of the Young, Delivered in the Supreme Court of the United States February 10, 1844 in the Case of Stephen Girard's Will (Washington: Gales & Seaton, 1844), pp. 51–52Google Scholar; [Edwards, Bela Bates], Writings of Professor B. B. Edwards (ed. Park, Edwards A.) (Andover: W. F. Draper, 1858), I, 489–490.Google Scholar Webster lost Ins case.

41. Taylor, p. 15; Beecher, , Works, I, 130, 137.Google Scholar This theme is common in all these works.

42. Humphrey, Heman, Valedictory Address Delivered at Amherst College (Amherst: J. S. & C. Adams, 1845), pp. 20–21Google Scholar; Bcecher, , Works, I, 111–112Google Scholar; Bushnell, Horace, Politics under the Law (Hartford: Edwin Hunt, 1844), p. 17.Google Scholar

43. Beecher, , Works, I, 118–122, 331–332.Google Scholar A related argument was sometimes used in connection with social ferment. Christianity, by establishing moral absolutes, erected limits to the powers of radical democracy. Mark Hopkins preached before the Massachusetts legislature in 1839 on the text, “We ought to obey God rather than men,” (Acts 5:29), applying it, not only (as traditionally) to conscientious disobedience to unchristian commands of authority, but to magistracy itself. “With us … there is little danger of direct oppression. The danger is that those who are in office … will, for the sake of immediate popularity, lend the sanction of their names to doctrines and practices, whieh, if carried into effect, must destroy all government.” Hopkins, Mark, Miscellaneous Essays and Discourses (Boston: P. R. Marvin, 1847), p. 348.Google Scholar

44. Humphrey, , Miscellaneous Discourses, pp. 376–378.Google Scholar

45. Taylor, p. 4; Beecher, , Works, II, 420Google Scholar; I, 336–337, 341, 337.

46. Beecher, , Works, I, 335.Google Scholar

47. Accounts of the campaign against Sunday mails are given in Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, The Age of Jackson (Boston; Little Brown, and Co., 1946), pp. 136–140Google Scholar; Bodo, John R., The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues 1812–1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 39–43Google Scholar; Stokes, II, 12- 20. See also the outraged comments in Leland, pp. 555, 561.

48. Leland, pp. 580–581, 670.

49. Mathews, L. K., The Expansion of New England (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909), p. 250.Google Scholar

50. Beecher, Lyman, A Plea for the West (Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1835), p. 11.Google Scholar

51. Bushell, Horace. Barbarism the First Danger (New York: American Home Missionary Society, 1847), p. 26.Google Scholar Bushnell sees the North-east as the hope of civilization in America. The West is endangered not only because of primitive conditions prevailing there but also because “it gathers in the rude minded and impoverished families flying from slavery in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee; together with such hordes of foreigners as the over-populated countries of Europe are obliged to spare.” Ibid., p. 17.

52. Edwards, I, 483.

53. This is brought out in Bodo, passim.

54. See Emmons, V, 169–180, 322–329; Beecher, , Works, I, 14, 321–327.Google Scholar

55. Beecher, , Works, I, 124.Google Scholar

56. See, for instance, the collection of sermons, Our Martyr President, Abraham Lincoln (New York: Tibbals & Whiting, 1865).Google Scholar Henry Ward Beecher's sentiment was typical: “Republican institutions have been vindicated in this experieace as they never were before; and the whole history of the last four years, rounded up by this cruel stroke, seems in the providence of God, to have been clothed, now with an illustration, with a sympathy, with an aptness, and with a significance, such as we never eould have expected nor imagined. God, I think, has said, by the voice of this event, to all nations of the earth, ‘Republican liberty, based upon true Christianity, is firm as the foundation of the globe.’ (Applause).” Ibid., pp. 45–46.

57. Bushnell, , Fathers, pp. 42–44.Google Scholar