Discussion of Religion in Early American Literature and Getting the Most of Your Study
Of all the subjects we will cover this semester, religion is the most difficult for students to enjoy and to which to relate. However, religion and the literature surrounding religion played a powerful role in everyday life in both colonial America and the Early Republic. Unfortunately, it's role is very different than that of religion in most lives today.
Because everyone already has their own religious beliefs, and they must assume--at least provisionally--that their religious beliefs are right, students read texts which differ from their own beliefs with suspicion. hostility, indifference, or--at best--wariness. Often, students are more focused on proving the authors we read in this section wrong or avoiding the appearance of "judging" than accepting that the authors believed their own beliefs right and built successful lives on and around these differing beliefs.
The fundamental rule for reading anyone--authors, friends, enemies, students, spouses, professors--is to read them with rhetorical charity, that is, to assume they have good reasons for believing as they do and that they may know more about the world we share than do we. This provisional assumption is necessary to learning and interpretation, and it doesn't mean that others hold true beliefs about the world, only they they may hold beliefs for which they have good reasons, and their beliefs *may* be better than one's own. After all, we know that there are those who hold stupid, dangerous beliefs, or a believer may be insane. My point here is that you must approach this reading with an open mind, charity, and respect, especially when you find yourself in disagreement. It is in disagreement where learning can begin to happen.
Another reason students don't get the religious writing of early America is we sometimes have trouble with understanding the importance of religion in the early American time period. One should not assume that religion did the same personal and cultural work then as it does today. One function of religion has always been ideological, that is, religions work to maintain and strengthen particular social power structures, ways of doing things, and ways of seeing the world. One means religion uses to do this work is by creating the illusion that present day communities and individuals are connected though liturgy, ritual, doctrine, and tradition with past believers. This belief in a continuous tradition of belief, ritual, and practice allows individuals to feel a sense of belonging to a community which pre-dates and promises to post-date their own brief existence; and--this is the important part, the traditions, practices and beliefs shared with the current set of believers creates community and group cohesion in individual lives and communities in the present.
Religion does much of this work through ritual, that is, certain repeated, structured practices which have been given meaning beyond the practices themselves. Think here of the Christian communion or, for that matter, weekly religious services and religious calendars of repeating events. Most of us know that rituals and liturgy change over time. Most of us know, for instance, that December 25 was most likely not the actual birthday of a the man history knows as Jesus. Most of us "know" that interpretations of scripture and other, "holy" writings change over time. For instance, the books of the Christian Bible have changed over time and may differ across sects, cultures, communities, as well as time. However, because part of the cultural work of religion is to give us a sense of stability and connection to a shared past, there's a world of difference between "knowing" and "believing" such changes matter.
Another reason students don't get the religious writing of early America is we sometimes have trouble with understanding the importance of religion in the early American time period. One should not assume that religion did the same personal and cultural work then as it does today. One function of religion has always been ideological, that is, religions work to maintain and strengthen particular social power structures, ways of doing things, and ways of seeing the world. One means religion uses to do this work is by creating the illusion that present day communities and individuals are connected though liturgy, ritual, doctrine, and tradition with past believers. This belief in a continuous tradition of belief, ritual, and practice allows individuals to feel a sense of belonging to a community which pre-dates and promises to post-date their own brief existence; and--this is the important part, the traditions, practices and beliefs shared with the current set of believers creates community and group cohesion in individual lives and communities in the present.
Religion does much of this work through ritual, that is, certain repeated, structured practices which have been given meaning beyond the practices themselves. Think here of the Christian communion or, for that matter, weekly religious services and religious calendars of repeating events. Most of us know that rituals and liturgy change over time. Most of us know, for instance, that December 25 was most likely not the actual birthday of a the man history knows as Jesus. Most of us "know" that interpretations of scripture and other, "holy" writings change over time. For instance, the books of the Christian Bible have changed over time and may differ across sects, cultures, communities, as well as time. However, because part of the cultural work of religion is to give us a sense of stability and connection to a shared past, there's a world of difference between "knowing" and "believing" such changes matter.
Indeed, in any given community of religion, most will argue that what changes are made to belief, liturgy, or practice are made to improve, purify, or regain connection to belief and practices of an idealized past. Hence, change itself becomes part of the rhetoric and illusion of connection to a shared, idealized past. For example, think of the Puritans as trying to purify the liturgy and rituals of the Church of England, which they saw as hopelessly mired in Catholic traditions. By "purifying" the Church of English of what they saw as "Papist" idolatry, the Puritans and other "Non-Conforming" sects saw them selves as helping to re-establish a religion closer to that of the "original" Christian church.
Another reason students have difficulty understanding the place and function of the religious belief of the Early American period is that almost all of us have been raised to consider religion a private matter. However, throughout the period we're studying, religion was a very public matter. Governments, including most early colonial governments, had state religions, religions which served an important function in helping to support and maintain the state and the existing power structure.
Another reason students have difficulty understanding the place and function of the religious belief of the Early American period is that almost all of us have been raised to consider religion a private matter. However, throughout the period we're studying, religion was a very public matter. Governments, including most early colonial governments, had state religions, religions which served an important function in helping to support and maintain the state and the existing power structure.
The Church of England was a national, state religion with the King or Queen of English serving as its head and God's representative on Earth. As you will see when you read some of the documents used to justify colonial conquest of Native America, one of the means the Spanish took possession the new world was that there was a clearly defined transfer of religious and temporal power from God, to Jesus, to St. Peter, to later Popes, to the King and Queen, to the Spanish Conquerors. The Pope gave half the new world to Spain. The state, Catholic church made claims to temporal authority possible, plausible, and gave internal legitimacy to state rule. To defy or fail to conform to the dictates of a temporal power was often to fail to conform to the dictates of religion. Hence, the King and Queen of Spain could take, exile, or kill Moors or Jews. Hence, Native peoples who defied the Spanish conquest or refused to accept Catholicism could legally be treated as citizens in revolt. Hence, Dissenters in England, like the Puritans, often became the focus of political radicalism and revolution, and might behead a king. See, for instance, what Cromwell did to Charles II.
People, hence, took religious belief very, very seriously, seriously enough to kill, imprison, torture, and go to war with one another. The Spanish Inquisition began as the Spanish pushed the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula around 1478, but the primary function of the Inquisition up until the Reformation was to ferret out heretics, closet Jews, and those who had adopted a host of dangerous ideas which ran counter to accepted state and church doctrine. The Inquisition continued in one form or another up until 1834. However, don't make the mistake of thinking that such treatment was limited to the Catholic Church, and its fight against heresy. Lutherans fought Catholics and both the Catholics and the Lutherans fought Calvinists--the forefathers of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Puritans, Dissenters, many Non-Conformists, and Baptists. The Puritans saw Native American religious practice as devil worship, that is, if they didn't see Indians as descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel; and, they were quick to establish Praying Towns, that is, communities of Christian, praying Indians. The belief that Indians were part of the Biblical story, in the form of being descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israelis was the subject of a host of books, including one by Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury; and, there was a host of "scientific" and "linguistic" theory spent proving the theory.
Of course, religion had public and political functions. It was a pretense as well as an object of contention, but these differences of opinion over how religion was to function within a government were taken much more seriously than they tend to be today. States had religions. For example, you might read and think about the implications of just one among thousands of incidents of religious violence during the Reformation (see, for instance, the Second Defenestration of Prague). Today the Second Defenestration seems a laughable story; however, in 1618--eleven years after the settlement of Jamestown--it was a matter of propaganda, sermons, and one cause of the fighting of the 30 Years War--a series of religious wars which significantly reduced the population of an entire region of Europe. States had religions; and, if the religion of the sate changed, then the state's relationship to its citizens changed.
My point is that what most of us today think of when they hear the word, "religion," has only a passing resemblance and shared meaning with what most considered religion to mean in the period between 1492 and 1867. Today, religion is considered a matter of personal choice and conscious, and it may or may not be considered an important aspect of one's life; this would have been a very radical position throughout most of the period we are studying. We rarely make a public issue of religion; indeed, we tend to avoid public discussions of religion expect with those we regard as trustworthy. We tend to respect the right of the individual to make their own choice and, by and large, respect the choice once made, even if it is not our choice. However, from the mid-1500s until 1815 French Huguenots fought, were persecuted, and killed and were killed on a daily basis for the "right of freedom of religious conscious."
Today, religion *can* be a topic whose discussion is usually reserved for those who happen to share many of the same beliefs and/or a topic reserved for discussion among close friends and family. In contrast, in Early America religion was a part of everyone's public persona, of public decision making, and of everyday life. For instance, Jefferson was accused of being an Atheist in the 1801 presidential campaign; and, largely due to the charge, his election came down to a vote by Congress, and it took Congress over thirty votes to decide between Jefferson, Burr, and Adams. Of course, Jefferson wasn't and Atheist, but this didn't keep many families, especially among the Congregationalist in New England, from hiding their Bibles when he was finally elected. Why? Because they were afraid he would use his power as president to outlaw religion and persecute those who practiced religion. This is how state religions worked, and if a nation was Catholic or Lutheran quite often rested on the religious belief of the current ruler.
Whether or not the charge of Jefferson's Atheism was justified, Jefferson, along with many of the founding fathers, was a Deist As such, he put together a revised version of the New Testament, something which would have offended (and still does) many, but he rewrote the Bible because he believed that religious superstition had been introduced into what he considered the most significant moral handbook of all time. He believed and argued in public that everyone should question their beliefs, debate religion with others, really listen to what the other person had to say, and discard any personal or received belief which didn't make sense under the light of reason and open discussion. Re-writing the Bible and discarding some of it was consistent with the view that true beliefs conformed to how the world was known, through reason and science, to work. Still, this was pretty radical, revolutionary thinking for many Americans, especially clergy, who thought religion and religious interpretation was the purview of specialists in the field; and, it was easy to see why Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine and other Deist might get labeled atheistic by more Conservative Christian sects.
Before beginning your reading this week, I suggest you review articles on the five most practiced American religions of the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, these being, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, Deism, and the Society of Friends. In these articles, look at their general overview, the basic tenets of belief, and their history between 1500 and 1850.
About Religious Freedom:
While many colonist came to America to gain more freedom of religion, this "freedom" was interpreted as the freedom to practice a religion which was likely persecuted in their home countries. For example, Puritans came to America to establish a colony who's state religion was based on Calvinist and Non-Conformist doctrine. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had little tolerance for the odd Catholic or even some sects of other Calvinist. There was Freedom of Religion, but it consisted of the freedom to practice Puritanism or leave. Puritans wanted a church and state which was pure and as like that of their visions of the early Christian church as possible. Those who differed in their interpretation of doctrine, hence, were sometimes punished with exile or even being killed as heretics. Moreover, to quote from the Wikipedia article on Puritanism, "they believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is best described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state."
Other colonies, like Pennsylvania, which was dominated by Quakers, were more tolerant of religious diversity. Indeed, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island enjoyed much the same reputation for liberalism we today assign to California. Whether the colony was meant to be a haven for a specific Christian sect--Pennsylvania for Quakers, Maryland for Catholics, MA for Congregationalists, etc.--if they were English colonies, the "official, state religion" remained Anglicism. Everyone, regardless of the religion they practiced, were taxed to support the state church, and it didn't matter if they attended the Church of England or abscribed to its beliefs. [To get a handle on how such publicly supported religious taxation worked, see the the Parson's Trail, one of Patrick Henry's early victories for colonial rights.] If they were Spanish colonies, the state religion was Catholicism. If French, what the state religion was depended on the current state of the Reformation in France. The upshot was that colonies usually were focused on one single religion but might, depending on a host of variables, allow another religion to practice. For instance, up until the Revolution, the only non-Anglican church which was built in Williamsburg was a Presbyterian Church--a sect which, at the time, shared much in common with other Calvinist sects but was associated with the Scottish peoples.
Why is a discussion of Religion such a central topic of Early American literature?
As I said above, religion permeated almost every aspect of daily life in colonial America. People went to sermons for fun. Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest preachers of the Great Awakening, was a kind of rock star of his era. Women swooned at his sermons, and men cried with tears. Thousands converted or readopted religion thanks to the preachers of the Great Awakening. In fact, you've read about one such public, outdoor sermon in Franklin's Autobiography. It was the sermon he went to to figure out what the big deal was about. After listening for a few minutes, he decides to donate the copper money in his pockets. After a few more minutes, he decides to donate the silver. Finally, he decides to donate everything he had on him, including the gold coins. The sermon and the speaker, a contemporary of Franklin and Jonathan Edwards, called George Whitfield was that powerful.
Sermons were also part of everyday life in America. Sermons were preached when the militia got together. They were preached before hangings and at funerals of public officials. There were sermons on Sundays, Saturdays, and--sometimes--throughout the week. People talked about the points raised. They debated what was said, and it wasn't uncommon for someone to take down a sermon in shorthand or for a publisher to publish a particularly popular sermon.
Sermons were not the only popular religious literature. This week, you'll get a chance to look at the first book published in the British Americas, the New England Primer. It was a book designed to help very young children learn to read, but it also acted as an introduction to Puritan doctrine. Look, for instance, at the rhymes which go with the letters "T"--"Time cuts down all, both great and small"--or for "B"--"Thy life to mend, this Book [the Bible] attend." We would consider this fairly heavy going for the 3-5 year old audience for whom it was intended, but it was also what they were taught so early and, hence, as much a part of their basic mental furniture as the basic shapes, colors, and farm animals are of your own.
In fact, the first book children were taught to read was the Bible, and the Bible was the most owned and printed book in the colonies. Often, because paper and printing was so expensive, the Bible would be the only book in a home, but it was read repeatedly, and everyone knew and used Biblical stories to make sense of the world. So, biblical references were a common way to couch ideas. For instance, this week, you'll re-read Franklin's "The Way to Wealth." As I said, Franklin was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, and the language he has his speaker, Father Abraham, use to preach to his flock about how to acquire and keep wealth is that of sermons and, in many respects, echoes the biblical cadences of works like the "New England Primer" and "The King Jame's Bible."
As you re-read Franklin, look back to his Autobiography, and look again in the first part at the early history of his family of "Dissenters." Pay particular attention to the story of his Grand-father having to hide the family Bible, less they be persecuted. Also look again at Franklin's discussion of his own religious beliefs, and think again about what Franklin's scheme to obtain moral perfection says about his religious beliefs in the place of religion and the individual in becoming moral.
Franklin and Edwards were contemporaries. Near the same time Franklin and Jefferson are practicing Deism, Edward's is preaching and converting thousands in what today would be seen as a hell and brimstone sermon about the total depravity of humankind and the grace of God in saving any of us from hell. Edwards does little more, in this particular sermon, than echo accepted Calvinist Doctrine.
Finally, put Franklin, Edwards, and Jefferson in dialogue with Thomas Paine. Paine is best known as the author of "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis," essays which united many of the population behind the Revolution. Assuming we have time, I'll try to fit these essays into the reading schedule for the semester. They are essential reading of the Revolutionary period, and the Revolution would not have succeeded without Paine's writing. He continues to be a figure which you must read to understand the American revolution. However, this week, you'll read the first chapter of his lesser known work, "The Age of Reason." In it, Paine carefully constructs his own profession of faith and a carefully reasoned argument against all formal religions.
To understand the role of religion in Early America, you must understand that each of these figures thought he had it right, AND they were able to co-exist within the same colonies and later, nation. Paine wanted rational proof for religious belief, and he argued that religion was too important to get it wrong. Jefferson wanted pure moral tenets supported, by reason, debate, and good works. Edwards--perhaps the most representative of popular belief at the time--thought we are all totally deprived and the clearest proof of God's love is found in His (God was always male to the Puritans.) willingness to overlook the depravity of those he choose to save from the pits and pain of a hell we all so richly deserve.
Here's the last point to get your head around:
The fact that the right to practice one's religion was built so predominately into our Constitution and is so intimately connected to the right to free speech has much less to do with those colonists who came here to practice their personal vision of religious truth and much more to do with getting a group of colonies, each with a particular religious focus and made up of a host of communities with their own religious focus to be able to exist within the same government framework. By choosing to depict freedom of religion as an inherent, natural, inalienable right of the individual, our founders essentially took religion off the table as a subject of public debate. This is one reason why most Americans today don't understand how to discuss religion, and religion has become, in most cases, a private rather than a public matter. This is brilliant politics, and we have Jefferson, more than any other founder, to thank for this solution to a very difficult public problem.
After all, who can argue with the language of the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom? In essence, Jefferson says, "If we are allowed to discuss religion together, the truth will soon become apparent." Who didn't believe that it was their truth which would triumph? And, equally important, once the principle of the separation of church and state was established, few could deny how much easier it was for communities of differing religions and individuals to co-exist with debate as a basis of interaction. Debate is so much easier on the individual and the land that seeking to destroy one another in an all or nothing fight, all the name of right and love. While it may still be true that those who differ on what are, essentially, religious grounds over public polity--think here of abortion or stem-cell research--might think about defenestration of those who oppose them, anyone who does kill on such grounds are now seen as aberrant by the majority of Americans. Debate and discussion have triumphed over coercion and a religious tyranny which is sanctioned by the state. Rather you see current public policy as right or wrong is no longer a matter over which you kill your neighbor and the state no longer has the right to burn you for your religious beliefs, that is, as long as they don't cause you to break certain civil laws.
People, hence, took religious belief very, very seriously, seriously enough to kill, imprison, torture, and go to war with one another. The Spanish Inquisition began as the Spanish pushed the Moors out of the Iberian Peninsula around 1478, but the primary function of the Inquisition up until the Reformation was to ferret out heretics, closet Jews, and those who had adopted a host of dangerous ideas which ran counter to accepted state and church doctrine. The Inquisition continued in one form or another up until 1834. However, don't make the mistake of thinking that such treatment was limited to the Catholic Church, and its fight against heresy. Lutherans fought Catholics and both the Catholics and the Lutherans fought Calvinists--the forefathers of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Puritans, Dissenters, many Non-Conformists, and Baptists. The Puritans saw Native American religious practice as devil worship, that is, if they didn't see Indians as descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel; and, they were quick to establish Praying Towns, that is, communities of Christian, praying Indians. The belief that Indians were part of the Biblical story, in the form of being descendants of a Lost Tribe of Israelis was the subject of a host of books, including one by Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury; and, there was a host of "scientific" and "linguistic" theory spent proving the theory.
Of course, religion had public and political functions. It was a pretense as well as an object of contention, but these differences of opinion over how religion was to function within a government were taken much more seriously than they tend to be today. States had religions. For example, you might read and think about the implications of just one among thousands of incidents of religious violence during the Reformation (see, for instance, the Second Defenestration of Prague). Today the Second Defenestration seems a laughable story; however, in 1618--eleven years after the settlement of Jamestown--it was a matter of propaganda, sermons, and one cause of the fighting of the 30 Years War--a series of religious wars which significantly reduced the population of an entire region of Europe. States had religions; and, if the religion of the sate changed, then the state's relationship to its citizens changed.
My point is that what most of us today think of when they hear the word, "religion," has only a passing resemblance and shared meaning with what most considered religion to mean in the period between 1492 and 1867. Today, religion is considered a matter of personal choice and conscious, and it may or may not be considered an important aspect of one's life; this would have been a very radical position throughout most of the period we are studying. We rarely make a public issue of religion; indeed, we tend to avoid public discussions of religion expect with those we regard as trustworthy. We tend to respect the right of the individual to make their own choice and, by and large, respect the choice once made, even if it is not our choice. However, from the mid-1500s until 1815 French Huguenots fought, were persecuted, and killed and were killed on a daily basis for the "right of freedom of religious conscious."
Today, religion *can* be a topic whose discussion is usually reserved for those who happen to share many of the same beliefs and/or a topic reserved for discussion among close friends and family. In contrast, in Early America religion was a part of everyone's public persona, of public decision making, and of everyday life. For instance, Jefferson was accused of being an Atheist in the 1801 presidential campaign; and, largely due to the charge, his election came down to a vote by Congress, and it took Congress over thirty votes to decide between Jefferson, Burr, and Adams. Of course, Jefferson wasn't and Atheist, but this didn't keep many families, especially among the Congregationalist in New England, from hiding their Bibles when he was finally elected. Why? Because they were afraid he would use his power as president to outlaw religion and persecute those who practiced religion. This is how state religions worked, and if a nation was Catholic or Lutheran quite often rested on the religious belief of the current ruler.
Whether or not the charge of Jefferson's Atheism was justified, Jefferson, along with many of the founding fathers, was a Deist As such, he put together a revised version of the New Testament, something which would have offended (and still does) many, but he rewrote the Bible because he believed that religious superstition had been introduced into what he considered the most significant moral handbook of all time. He believed and argued in public that everyone should question their beliefs, debate religion with others, really listen to what the other person had to say, and discard any personal or received belief which didn't make sense under the light of reason and open discussion. Re-writing the Bible and discarding some of it was consistent with the view that true beliefs conformed to how the world was known, through reason and science, to work. Still, this was pretty radical, revolutionary thinking for many Americans, especially clergy, who thought religion and religious interpretation was the purview of specialists in the field; and, it was easy to see why Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine and other Deist might get labeled atheistic by more Conservative Christian sects.
Before beginning your reading this week, I suggest you review articles on the five most practiced American religions of the Colonial and Revolutionary eras, these being, Catholicism, Anglicanism, Calvinism, Deism, and the Society of Friends. In these articles, look at their general overview, the basic tenets of belief, and their history between 1500 and 1850.
About Religious Freedom:
While many colonist came to America to gain more freedom of religion, this "freedom" was interpreted as the freedom to practice a religion which was likely persecuted in their home countries. For example, Puritans came to America to establish a colony who's state religion was based on Calvinist and Non-Conformist doctrine. The Massachusetts Bay Colony had little tolerance for the odd Catholic or even some sects of other Calvinist. There was Freedom of Religion, but it consisted of the freedom to practice Puritanism or leave. Puritans wanted a church and state which was pure and as like that of their visions of the early Christian church as possible. Those who differed in their interpretation of doctrine, hence, were sometimes punished with exile or even being killed as heretics. Moreover, to quote from the Wikipedia article on Puritanism, "they believed that secular governors are accountable to God (not through the church, but alongside it) to protect and reward virtue, including "true religion", and to punish wrongdoers — a policy that is best described as non-interference rather than separation of church and state."
Other colonies, like Pennsylvania, which was dominated by Quakers, were more tolerant of religious diversity. Indeed, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island enjoyed much the same reputation for liberalism we today assign to California. Whether the colony was meant to be a haven for a specific Christian sect--Pennsylvania for Quakers, Maryland for Catholics, MA for Congregationalists, etc.--if they were English colonies, the "official, state religion" remained Anglicism. Everyone, regardless of the religion they practiced, were taxed to support the state church, and it didn't matter if they attended the Church of England or abscribed to its beliefs. [To get a handle on how such publicly supported religious taxation worked, see the the Parson's Trail, one of Patrick Henry's early victories for colonial rights.] If they were Spanish colonies, the state religion was Catholicism. If French, what the state religion was depended on the current state of the Reformation in France. The upshot was that colonies usually were focused on one single religion but might, depending on a host of variables, allow another religion to practice. For instance, up until the Revolution, the only non-Anglican church which was built in Williamsburg was a Presbyterian Church--a sect which, at the time, shared much in common with other Calvinist sects but was associated with the Scottish peoples.
Why is a discussion of Religion such a central topic of Early American literature?
As I said above, religion permeated almost every aspect of daily life in colonial America. People went to sermons for fun. Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest preachers of the Great Awakening, was a kind of rock star of his era. Women swooned at his sermons, and men cried with tears. Thousands converted or readopted religion thanks to the preachers of the Great Awakening. In fact, you've read about one such public, outdoor sermon in Franklin's Autobiography. It was the sermon he went to to figure out what the big deal was about. After listening for a few minutes, he decides to donate the copper money in his pockets. After a few more minutes, he decides to donate the silver. Finally, he decides to donate everything he had on him, including the gold coins. The sermon and the speaker, a contemporary of Franklin and Jonathan Edwards, called George Whitfield was that powerful.
Sermons were also part of everyday life in America. Sermons were preached when the militia got together. They were preached before hangings and at funerals of public officials. There were sermons on Sundays, Saturdays, and--sometimes--throughout the week. People talked about the points raised. They debated what was said, and it wasn't uncommon for someone to take down a sermon in shorthand or for a publisher to publish a particularly popular sermon.
Sermons were not the only popular religious literature. This week, you'll get a chance to look at the first book published in the British Americas, the New England Primer. It was a book designed to help very young children learn to read, but it also acted as an introduction to Puritan doctrine. Look, for instance, at the rhymes which go with the letters "T"--"Time cuts down all, both great and small"--or for "B"--"Thy life to mend, this Book [the Bible] attend." We would consider this fairly heavy going for the 3-5 year old audience for whom it was intended, but it was also what they were taught so early and, hence, as much a part of their basic mental furniture as the basic shapes, colors, and farm animals are of your own.
In fact, the first book children were taught to read was the Bible, and the Bible was the most owned and printed book in the colonies. Often, because paper and printing was so expensive, the Bible would be the only book in a home, but it was read repeatedly, and everyone knew and used Biblical stories to make sense of the world. So, biblical references were a common way to couch ideas. For instance, this week, you'll re-read Franklin's "The Way to Wealth." As I said, Franklin was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards, and the language he has his speaker, Father Abraham, use to preach to his flock about how to acquire and keep wealth is that of sermons and, in many respects, echoes the biblical cadences of works like the "New England Primer" and "The King Jame's Bible."
As you re-read Franklin, look back to his Autobiography, and look again in the first part at the early history of his family of "Dissenters." Pay particular attention to the story of his Grand-father having to hide the family Bible, less they be persecuted. Also look again at Franklin's discussion of his own religious beliefs, and think again about what Franklin's scheme to obtain moral perfection says about his religious beliefs in the place of religion and the individual in becoming moral.
Franklin and Edwards were contemporaries. Near the same time Franklin and Jefferson are practicing Deism, Edward's is preaching and converting thousands in what today would be seen as a hell and brimstone sermon about the total depravity of humankind and the grace of God in saving any of us from hell. Edwards does little more, in this particular sermon, than echo accepted Calvinist Doctrine.
Finally, put Franklin, Edwards, and Jefferson in dialogue with Thomas Paine. Paine is best known as the author of "Common Sense" and "The American Crisis," essays which united many of the population behind the Revolution. Assuming we have time, I'll try to fit these essays into the reading schedule for the semester. They are essential reading of the Revolutionary period, and the Revolution would not have succeeded without Paine's writing. He continues to be a figure which you must read to understand the American revolution. However, this week, you'll read the first chapter of his lesser known work, "The Age of Reason." In it, Paine carefully constructs his own profession of faith and a carefully reasoned argument against all formal religions.
To understand the role of religion in Early America, you must understand that each of these figures thought he had it right, AND they were able to co-exist within the same colonies and later, nation. Paine wanted rational proof for religious belief, and he argued that religion was too important to get it wrong. Jefferson wanted pure moral tenets supported, by reason, debate, and good works. Edwards--perhaps the most representative of popular belief at the time--thought we are all totally deprived and the clearest proof of God's love is found in His (God was always male to the Puritans.) willingness to overlook the depravity of those he choose to save from the pits and pain of a hell we all so richly deserve.
Here's the last point to get your head around:
The fact that the right to practice one's religion was built so predominately into our Constitution and is so intimately connected to the right to free speech has much less to do with those colonists who came here to practice their personal vision of religious truth and much more to do with getting a group of colonies, each with a particular religious focus and made up of a host of communities with their own religious focus to be able to exist within the same government framework. By choosing to depict freedom of religion as an inherent, natural, inalienable right of the individual, our founders essentially took religion off the table as a subject of public debate. This is one reason why most Americans today don't understand how to discuss religion, and religion has become, in most cases, a private rather than a public matter. This is brilliant politics, and we have Jefferson, more than any other founder, to thank for this solution to a very difficult public problem.
After all, who can argue with the language of the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom? In essence, Jefferson says, "If we are allowed to discuss religion together, the truth will soon become apparent." Who didn't believe that it was their truth which would triumph? And, equally important, once the principle of the separation of church and state was established, few could deny how much easier it was for communities of differing religions and individuals to co-exist with debate as a basis of interaction. Debate is so much easier on the individual and the land that seeking to destroy one another in an all or nothing fight, all the name of right and love. While it may still be true that those who differ on what are, essentially, religious grounds over public polity--think here of abortion or stem-cell research--might think about defenestration of those who oppose them, anyone who does kill on such grounds are now seen as aberrant by the majority of Americans. Debate and discussion have triumphed over coercion and a religious tyranny which is sanctioned by the state. Rather you see current public policy as right or wrong is no longer a matter over which you kill your neighbor and the state no longer has the right to burn you for your religious beliefs, that is, as long as they don't cause you to break certain civil laws.
As always, write with questions.
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