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Paradox Lost: Order and Progress in Evangelical Thought of Mid-Nineteenth-Century America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Major L. Wilson
Major L. Wilson
Affiliation:
Mr. Wilson is professor of history in Memphis State University, Memphis, Tennessee
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Extract

The concept of a cultural whole is a very fruitful idea for the cultural historian. Involved in it is the assumption that a unity of form pervades the entire culture and that each significant part of the culture—religious, political, social, literary, and so forth—participates in and gives expression to this pervasive form. The assumption is clearly one of great practical importance, for it invites the historian to believe that a close study of one part will throw light upon all others. Accordingly, the present study seeks, by special focus on one aspect of evangelical thought, to help elucidate the pervasive liberal outlook of midnineteenth-century America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 352 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1975

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References

1. See Gombrich, E. H., In Search of Cultural History (Oxford, 1969).Google Scholar

2. Dudden, Arthur P., “Nostalgia and the American,” Journal of the History of ideas 22. (10 1961): 515–531CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bury, J. B., The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth (New York, 1955), p. 2.Google Scholar

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6. This belief in original perfection is what Boorstin, Daniel J. has called the “preformation theory.” The Genius of American Politics (Chicago, 1953), p. 20Google Scholar. Wesley Frank Craven has likewise noted “the common inclination of the American people to look back to the origins of their country for an explanation of its essential character,” The Legend of the Founding Fathers (Ithaca, 1965), p v.Google Scholar

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8. Four periodicals comprise the basic sources for this study: Christian Baptist (Disciples); Chsistian Review (Baptist); Mcthodist Quarterly Review; Princeton Review (Presbyterian). Many other sources have also been used, as the notes will indicate. A fuller word on the use of these sources should be made at this point. No claim is made that all of the reviews and articles to be found in these sources would support the concepts of order and progress described in the text. But opposing views might best be regarded as a minor premise which served, in a dialectical fashion, to illuminate the major premise here presented. Vital debate in a culture, as R.W.B. Lewis has pointed out, tends to revolve around some major theme. See The American Adam: Innocence, Tragcdy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago, 1955), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

9. Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (01 1846): 15Google Scholar; Christian Review 18 (07 1853):373Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (04 1846): 213.Google Scholar

10. Butterfield, Herbert, The Whig Interpretation of History (London, 1931)Google Scholar; Christian Review 12 (07 1853): 407Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (01 1846): 18Google Scholar; Princeton Review 9 (01 1837): 10, 25Google Scholar. The emphasis Sidney E. Mead places on the quality of “historylessness” in the evangelical outlook is essentially sound, but the Whig interpretation they gave to events clearly indicates that they possessed some sense of man in time. See The Lively Experiment: The Shaping of Christianity in America (New York, 1963): pp. 108–113.Google Scholar

11. Methodist Quarterly Review 23 (04 1841): 247; 28 (04 1846): 218.Google Scholar

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13. Methodist Quarterly Review 23 (04 1841): 247Google Scholar; Princeton Review 13 (07 1841): 359; 21 (07 1849): 314; 8 (07 1830): 328Google Scholar. McLoughlin outlines the democratic thrust in Finney, , Lectures on Revivals of Religion, pp. ix–xxGoogle Scholar. John R. Bodo distinguishes the corporate and the individual emphases very clearly, though he tends to underemphasize the impulse to order in the latter; see The Protestant Clergy and Public Issues, 1812–1848 (Princeton, 1954).Google Scholar

14. de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, ed. Bradley, Phillips, 2 vols. (New York 1945), 1:316.Google Scholar

15. Methodist Quarterly Review 30 (10 1848): 537Google Scholar; Princeton Review 14 (04 1842): 287Google Scholar; Christian Review 8 (12 1843): 539.Google Scholar

16. For an analysis of this debate, see Wagar, W. Warren, “Modern Views of the Origin of the Idea of Progress,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (03 1967): 55–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Timothy L. Smith demonstrates clearly the widespread belief in millennialism. More precisely, he speaks of post-millennialism, the belief that the thousand good years here on earth will come through the proximate agency of man and before the Second Coming; see Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York, 1963), pp. 148–237.Google Scholar

17. Princeton Review 29 (04 1857): 217Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (06 1847): 22.Google Scholar

18. Mcthodist Quarterly Review 24 (07 1842):410Google Scholar; Princeton Review 15 (10 1843): 497Google Scholar; Christian Review 4 (06 1839): 294.Google Scholar

19. Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (07 1846): 373Google Scholar; Christian Review 2 (03 1837): 102–103.Google Scholar

20. Princeton Review 25 (07 1853): 390Google Scholar; Beecher, Henry Ward, “The Benefits and Evils of Commerce,” Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 24 (02 1851): 151Google Scholar; Princeton Review 9 (01 1839): 116.Google Scholar

21. Princeton Review 14 (07 1842): 395Google Scholar; Wayland, Francis, “The Elements of Political Economy,” in McLoughlin, William G., ed., The American Evangelicals, 1800–1900: An Anthology (New York, 1968), p. 116Google Scholar; Princeton Review 13 (01 1841): 113Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Reiew 23 (04 1841): 240.Google Scholar

22. Christian Baptist 6 (08 4, 1828): 461Google Scholar0; Princeton Review 14 (01 1852): 16Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 23 (07 1841): 424Google Scholar; Christian Review 5 (06 1840): 223Google Scholar; Princeton Review 15 (10 1843): 506.Google Scholar

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24. Christian Review 22 (07 1857): 371Google Scholar; Princeton Review 10 (04 1838): 179Google Scholar; Bushneli, Horace, “Moral Uses of the Sea,” Hunt's Merchants' Magazine 14 (01 1840): 63Google Scholar; Henry Ward Beacher, “The Benefits and Evils of Commerce,” ibid. 24 (February 1851): 152.

25. Princeton Review 10 (04 1838): 239Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 23 (04 1841): 240; 29 (04 1847): 272.Google Scholar

26. Boutwell, George S., “Trade; with Regard to Its Origin, Laws and Its Influence on Civilization, and on the Industrial Powers of Nations,” Hunt' Merchants' Magazine 22 (06 1850): 595–596Google Scholar; Bushnell, “Moral Uses of the Sea,” ibid. 14 (January 1846): 63.

27. Christian Review 16 (01 1851): 35Google Scholar. A good brief statement of the long-standing concept of the westward course of empire can be found in Loren Baritz, , “The Idea of the West,” American Historical Review 66 (04 1961): 618–640.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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29. Princeton Review 28 (01 1856): 61Google Scholar; Christian Review 10 (06 1845): 253.Google Scholar

30. Princeton Review 11 (01 1839): 114–142Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (04 1846): 207, 226Google Scholar. In his discussion of the “natural social order” Arieli overlooks this important historical component in the social thought of Adam Smith; see Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology, pp. 88–118. For a brilliant analysis of Smith's thought about the corporate historical element in his social views, see Morrow, Glenn R., The Ethical and Economic Theories of Adam Smith (New York, 1923).Google Scholar

31. Metiodist Quarterly Review 30 (10 1848): 552.Google Scholar

32. Christian Review 10 (06 1845): 255, 241Google Scholar; Finney, , Lectures on Revivals of Religion, p. 16Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 27 (10 1845): 589Google Scholar; Christian Review 2 (12 1837): 512; 16 (10 1851): 585.Google Scholar

33. Christian Review 9 (09 1844): 343Google Scholar; Finney, , Lectures on Revivals of Religion, p. 11Google Scholar. Helpful background for this view of progress can be found in Persons, Stow, “The Cyclical Theory of History in Eighteenth Century America,” American Quarterly 6 (Summer 1954): 147–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Democratic Review 7 (03 1840): 216, 215; 6 (09 1839): 214; 1 (10 1837): 108; 3 (11 1838): 195, 196; 6 (05 1839): 503; 2 (06 1838): 313Google Scholar; Fourth Annual Message, December 4, 1832, Richardson, James D., comp., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1902, 10 vols. (New York, 1903) 2:605–606.Google Scholar

35. Wilmot cited in Going, Charles Buxton, David Wilmot, Free Soiler: A Biography of the Great Advocate of the Wümot Proviso (New York, 1924), p. 529Google Scholar; Congressional Globe, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix, 108 (02 28, 1836)Google Scholar; Abraham Lincoln, Speech at New Haven, 6 March 1860; Speech at Peoria, 16 October 1854, Basler, Roy P., ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, 1953), 4:17, 2:249, 276.Google Scholar

36. An old Liberty party man to George W. Julian, 18 October 1860, Joshua R. Giddings George W. Julian Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Washington, D. C.); James R. Briggs to Lincoln, 7 November 1860, Robert Todd Lincoln Collection, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division; Congressional Globe, 34 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix, 1075–1076 (August 2, 1836); 33 Cong., 1 Sess., Appendix, 140 (February 3, 1854). Though he dealt with the matter in different terms, Arthur Meier Schlesinger has clearly defined the pattern in American politics as a rhythm of action and repose; see “The Tiāes of National Politics,” Paths to the Present (New York, 1949), pp. 79–92.Google Scholar

37. Democratic Review 7 (03 1840): 216Google Scholar; Christian Review 16 (01 1851): 1Google Scholar; Democratic Review 1 (10 1837): 1–15Google Scholar. McLoughlin takes strong exception to this interpretation of the democratic and religious spokesmen of the nineteenth century. In his view the evangelical triumph over infidelity by 1835 served less to bring democracy back to Christianity than to secularize true piety and sink the millennial idea into the brave new world of Enlightenment thought. As a consequence, religious revival and political movements of return to the fathers have been little more than “ritualistic reaffirmaions of the tribal faith in the American dream.” See Modern Revivalism, p. 6.

38. Finney, , Lectures on Revivals of Religion, p. 11Google Scholar; Bushnell, , Christian Nurture (New Haven, 1967), p. 22Google Scholar, passim; Mercersburg Review 1 (11 1849): 528Google Scholar. Fuller background on Nevin's position and its debt to German idealism and historicism can be found in Nichols, James Hastings, Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago, 1961).Google Scholar

39. It was this aspect which Rowland Berthoff emphasized in his work on the “social disorder” in America by the mid-nineteenth century; see An Unsettled People, pp. 177–232.

40. Princeton Review 13 (07 1841): 353Google Scholar; Methodist Quarterly Review 28 (04 1846): 226.Google Scholar