Religion in American Life
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RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE A Short History Second Edition JON BUTLER, GRANT WACKER, and RANDALL BALMER 1 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2000, 2003, 2008, 2011 by Jon Butler; 2000, 2003, 2008, 2011 by Grant Wacker; 2001, 2003, 2008, 2011 by Randall Balmer First published in hardcover as Jon Butler, Religion in Colonial America (2000); Grant Wacker, Religion in Nineteenth-Century America (2000); Randall Balmer, Religion in Twentieth-Century America (2001); Jon Butler, Grant Wacker, and Randall Balmer, Religion in American Life: A Short History (2003) Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Butler, Jon, 1940- Religion in American life : a short history / Jon Butler, Grant Wacker, and Randall Balmer.—2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-19-983269-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. United States—Religion. I. Wacker, Grant, 1945- II. Balmer, Randall Herbert. III. Title. BL2525.B88 2011 200.973—dc23 2011020802 Frontispiece: Presbyterian Mission School employees and their children head home after Sunday church in Oklahoma. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To the memory of three wonderful teachers and friends: Anita Rutman, Darrett Rutman, and Paul Lucas —JB For Julia, who turned ideals into deeds Americorps City Year, San Jose 1998–99 —GW For Catharine—wife, lover, interlocutor, best friend, and fellow-traveler —RB This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS PREFACE xi RELIGION IN COLONIAL AMERICA Jon Butler CHAPTER ONE: Worlds Old and New 1 CHAPTER TWO: Religion and Missions in New Spain and New France 21 CHAPTER THREE: Religion in England’s First Colonies 47 CHAPTER FOUR: The Flowering of Religious Diversity 72 CHAPTER FIVE: African and American Indian Religion 92 CHAPTER SIX: Reviving Colonial Religion 111 CHAPTER SEVEN: Religion and the American Revolution 133 RELIGION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA Grant Wacker CHAPTER EIGHT: Prophets for a NeW Nation 155 CONTENTS CHAPTER NINE: Awakeners of the Heart 171 CHAPTER TEN: Reformers and Visionaries 186 CHAPTER ELEVEN: Restorers of Ancient Ways 201 CHAPTER TWELVE: Sojourners at Home 213 CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Warriors for God and Religion 232 CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Fashioners of Immigrant Faiths 247 CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Innovators in a World of New Ideas 262 CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Conservers of Tradition 274 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Adventurers of the Spirit 292 RELIGION IN TWENTIETH- AND TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AMERICA Randall Balmer CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: A New Century 311 CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Age of Militancy 325 CHAPTER TWENTY: In God We Trust 343 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Religion in the New Frontier 363 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Religion in an Age of Upheaval 382 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Preachers, Politicians, and Prodigals 400 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Coming to Terms with Pluralism 414 CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Religion in the New Millennium 432 EPILOGUE 443 CHRONOLOGY 446 FURTHER READING 468 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 497 TEXT CREDITS 500 PICTURE CREDITS 502 INDEX 505 ix This page intentionally left blank PREFACE eligion—beliefs in supernatural powers, forces, and Rbeings—powerfully shaped the peoples and society that would become the United States. That this happened in a society lacking any offi cial national church after American independence in 1776 is one of the central themes of Religion in American Life: A Short History. This book offers a succinct and vivid account of religion’s astonishing interaction with America’s peoples, society, politics, and life from European conquest and colonization to the beginning of the twenty-fi rst century. In America, religion would be pursued by an amazing variety of individuals and groups whose successes and failures across three centuries not only defi ned religion in America but America itself. The story of religion in America thus stands at the heart of the story of America itself. It is not the story of just a few. Quite the contrary. It is a story of natives and immigrants, of the wealthy, the poor, and those in between, of women, men, and children in families and out, of powerful political move- ments and parties to highly introspective individuals, of dreams xi PREFACE realized and aspirations disappointed, of bigotry, yet also of often tender generosity, kindness, and mutual esteem. Religion in America, therefore, usually stands with the grain of American secular history, not against it. In America, religion has been intertwined with immigration from the sixteenth to the twenty-fi rst centuries. It deals with the American Revolution and the Civil War, with abolitionism and the corruptions of the Gilded Age, with American Progressivism, the rise of big busi- ness, and the response of the labor movement, with racism, anti- Catholicism, and anti-Semitism as well as with the civil rights crusade of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with protest against the Vietnam War and with the rise of a new American conservatism and the elections of Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Above all, the narrative of religion in America is a story about people. It is the story of women—Anne Hutchinson, Phoebe Palmer, and Dorothy Day—as well as the story of men—Tenskwatawa, George Whitefi eld, Isaac Mayer Wise, and Billy Graham. It is the story of efforts to instruct children not only in formal religious teachings but also in morals and ways of behaving, from the Puritans to nineteenth-century Protestant temperance crusaders, to Buddhist immigrants hon- oring a traditional infant presentation ceremony. It is a story of failed preachers—the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart—and of sub- tly religious laity—Abraham Lincoln. And it is the story of men and women and, sometimes, children, not only as individuals but gathered together in that famous American institution, the “voluntary organization”—religious congregations plus count- less religiously directed groups—the Women’s Christian Tem- perance Union, Hadassah, the Moral Majority, Sunday Schools, the list is nearly endless. xii PREFACE The story of religion in America, then, is not an aberrant story. In a society so remarkably secular in so many ways—the American pursuit of wealth, the quest for international leader- ship, the love of science and technology—religion frequently stood at the heart of the American experience itself, guiding it, underscoring its central themes, providing its often most ide- alistic—and sometimes its most diffi cult—expressions. Indeed, religion’s centrality to twenty-fi rst-century America—especially its complexity and intricacy—is a virtual invitation to under- stand the rich and fascinating evolution of religion in the Amer- ican past. In a brief compass, this is the history that Religion in American Life: A Short History seeks to tell. xiii This page intentionally left blank RELIGION IN COLONIAL AMERICA This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER ONE Worlds Old and New he French Jesuit Pierre de Charlevoix was fascinated Tby the religious customs of the Algonquian-speaking Indians of southern Canada and northern New York and New England. Charlevoix related many wonderful and strange sto- ries about Algonquian religion in his two-volume Journal of a Voyage to North-America (1761). Charlevoix was especially intrigued by Algonquian dreaming and its dramatic effect among traditional Algonquian believers. He was taken by a story told to him by French Jesuit missionaries working among the Algonquian Indians. An Algonquian man dreamed that he had been a prisoner held by Algonquian enemies. When he awoke, he was confused and afraid. What did the dream mean? When he consulted the Algonquian shaman, the fi gure who mediated between humans, the gods, and nature, the shaman told him he had to act out the implications of the dream. The man then had himself tied to a post while other Algonquians burned several parts of his body, just as would have happened had his captivity been real. 1 RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE For Algonquian-speaking Indians and other eastern wood- lands Indians, dreams and visions gave signals about life that must be followed. The dreams and visions exposed dangers, revealed opportunities, and explained important principles. Dreams dem- onstrated that the souls of men and women existed separately from the body. The souls of others spoke to the living through dreams, including the souls of the dead. When Algonquians dreamed about elk, they felt encouraged because elk symbolized life. But when Algonquians dreamed about bears, they became afraid because the bear signifi ed death. The Algonquian dream episodes signaled the compelling interrelationship between the Indians’ religious life and their day-to-day existence. Dreams and visions allowed spirits to com- municate with Indians who revealed eternal values. Dreams and visions evoked ordinary emotions and everyday circumstances to explain how the world worked. They described where each indi- vidual fi t in a universe that otherwise seemed so often disconcert- ing and confusing. For Indians, dreams revealed how thoroughly religion was not merely “belief,” but an intimate and interactive relationship among humans, the supernatural, and nature. As Charlevoix put it, “in whatever manner the dream is conceived, it is always looked upon as a thing sacred, and as the most ordi- nary way in which the gods make known their will to men.” Judith Giton did not want to go to America.