University of Kentucky UKnowledge History of Religion History 1976 Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800-1830 John A. Andrew III Franklin and Marshall College Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Andrew, John A. III, "Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth: New England Congregationalists and Foreign Missions, 1800-1830" (1976). History of Religion. 3. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_history_of_religion/3 REBUILDING THE CHRISTIAN COMMONWEALTH New England Congregationalists & Foreign Missions, 1800-1830 Rebuilding the Christian Commonwealth John A. Andrew III The University Press of Kentucky ISBN: 0-8131-1333-4 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-38214 Copyright © 1976 by The University Press of Kentucky A statewide cooperative scholarly publishing agency serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky State College, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506 CONTENTS Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1. The Search for Identity 4 2. A Panorama of Change 25 3. The New England Clergy and the Problem of Permanency 36 4. The Glory Is Departed 54 5. Enlisting the Public 70 6. The System at Work: The Sandwich Islands Mission 97 7. The Struggle for Stability 120 8. Achieving Permanence 140 9. Fighting the Way to Empire 151 Appendix: A Note on Sources 171 Notes 175 Bibliographical Essay 223 Index 229 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A number of libraries and librarians offered kind assistance during the manuscript research. For permission to examine and quote from collec- tions I would like to thank the Houghton Library at Harvard Univer- sity, Congregational Library, Connecticut Historical Society, American Antiquarian Society, and the Andover-Newton Theological Seminary. Mrs. Pam Autry and Mrs. Joanne Hawkins of the University of Texas at Austin always astonished me with their ability to acquire books on interlibrary loan. The Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin provided financial assistance while this project was in the disser- tation stage. Throughout the course of my work at the graduate level I was fortunate to have some sound advice and criticism. Howard Miller forced me to reconsider my assumptions about nineteenth-century social reform, and Lewis Gould carefully excised a number of rambling passages, thereby tightening the manuscript. James Curtis proved a model dissertation director as well as a kind friend. Although they are responsible for nothing that lies within, my wife and two children contributed in other, more meaningful, ways. INTRODUCTION A small band of dedicated missionaries met in Park Street Church, Boston, on October 15, 1819. They were to sail four days hence to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in the mid-Pacific and thereby usher in a new age of American religious activity. How did they get to Boston? Where did they come from? Why were they going? The answers to these questions reflect a society enmeshed in change—social, political, eco- nomic, and religious. Forces of change—increased land pressure, improvements in trans- portation, competition from agricultural areas to the west, and growing political factiousness—moved to divide society and alter communities. This transition brought with it the erosion of traditional institutional structures and social values. Because the change was gradual, it went almost unnoticed until it had become well advanced.1 The New England clergy, always sensitive to social change, noticed the trend earlier than most. Blaming it somewhat too simply on the post-Revolutionary religious declension, they sought to arrest any fur- ther decline. Looking back on the problem in 1812 Lyman Beecher observed: "The progress of declension is also so gradual, as to attract from day to day but little notice, or excite but little alarm. Now this slow, but certain approximation of the community to destruction, must be made manifest. The whole army of conspirators against law and order, must be brought out and arrayed before the public eye, and the shame, and the bondage, and the wo [sic], which they are preparing for us."2 Beecher's attack on "conspirators against law and order" was an ill-disguised assault on those who were abetting the disintegration of the old order. Like Beecher, most clergymen were prone to find decline everywhere. Westward migration propelled by population pressure and declining soil fertility in older sectors, the disruption of commercial activities accompanying the Embargo and war, and increasingly bitter political conflict combined with a decline in religious uniformity, 2 Introduction growing clerical impermanency, and the revivals of the Second Great Awakening to challenge traditional assumptions of order, stability, and communal integrity and responsibility.3 Beset by these challenges, the Congregational clergy sought to recover Christian unity through new measures.4 To promote this unity and combat the evils of the age, pastors called on the youth of New England. They recruited young men with energy and commitment from villages, colleges, and theological seminaries. Their design was not solely to retain the hegemony of the Puritan church, but something larger: the preservation of a Christian America.s To bolster a sinking institutional structure and to meet the challenge of disestablishment these young crusaders turned to voluntarism and erected new institutional barriers to control the forces of change. The foreign missionary movement was central to this effort. General- ly apart from denominational hostility and removed from domestic political battles over disestablishment, foreign missions became the vehicle for a two-dimensional assault on heathenism. Foreign mission- ary activity would not only Christianize the heathen overseas, it would also revive and unify the religious at home. Both promoted the brother- hood of man and the Christian mission of American society. Speaking in 1800, the Reverend Nathaniel Emmons underscored the necessity of such action: "This is probably the last peculiar people which he [God] means to form, and the last great empire which he means to erect, before the kingdoms of this world are absorbed in the kingdoms of Christ. And if he intends to bring about these great events, he will undoubtedly make use of human exertions."6 Clerical efforts to curb divisiveness and disintegration in American life, however, achieved only partial success. This new commonwealth accommodated itself from the outset to the rampant economic individ- ualism then so prevalent in New England society. It linked piety with prosperity in a prescription for national happiness. Evangelical religion joined with American commerce and domestic prosperity to spread Christian benevolence throughout the world. At the same time it sought to return religion to its original commitment to society and people: to the saving of souls. Foreign mission societies attempted to transcend domestic religious division and political factiousness. Developing during the second decade of the nineteenth century, an extensive network of these societies permeated New England by 1820. They received their direction from Introduction 3 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in Boston and carried its message across the region. Avast propaganda machine, aided by hundreds of agents and other warriors for the Messiah, gathered support for foreign missions. With a successful mis- sion established in the Sandwich Islands by the mid-1820s, the ABCFM reached financial stability. By 1830 it achieved permanence—a point of stability in an era of change. The new institutional structure, however, rode the crest of change. It neither curbed nor consolidated it. To historians of this enterprise, missionary activities have acquired an aura of glamor and romance. Missionaries appear as saints in their own time. Using the organization of the Sandwich Islands Mission as a case analysis, this study seeks to move beyond adoration and examine both the missionaries and the societies that supported them. The Sandwich Islands Mission illustrated the objectives of this cru- sade, as missionaries attempted to implant New England culture and the Christian religion. Here, as elsewhere, social reform followed the advent of missionary activity, for Christianization meant not only attachment to a new religion but also reformation of fundamental social principles. For this the missionaries were criticized and condemned, but theirs was a dynamic Calvinism. They sought to transform and save and did not introduce change merely to enhance personal reputations and influence. Unless their efforts are interpreted with a sensitivity to their own world and their perceptions of it, one cannot understand their objectives and motivation. At the Sandwich Islands in particular, the early mission activities should not bear the charges of narrow self-interest and sectar- ianism that