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The Accommodation of Protestant Christianity with the Enlightenment: an Old Drama Still Being Enacted The Accommodation of Protestant Christianity with the Enlightenment: An Old Drama Still Being Enacted David A. Hollinger Abstract: Throughout its history, the United States has been a major site for the accommodation of Protestant Christianity with the Enlightenment. This accommodation has been driven by two closely related but distinct processes: the demysti½cation of religion’s cognitive claims by scienti½c advances, exempli½ed by the Higher Criticism in Biblical scholarship and the Darwinian revolution in natural his- tory; and the demographic diversi½cation of society, placing Protestants in the increasingly intimate company of Americans who did not share a Protestant past and thus inspiring doubts about the validity of inherited ideas and practices for the entire human species. The accommodation of Protestant Christian- ity with the Enlightenment will continue to hold a place among American narratives as long as “diversity” and “science” remain respected values, and as long as the population includes a substantial number of Protestants. If you think that time has passed, look around you. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King, Jr., invoked the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock and Jefferson writing the Declara- tion of Independence. In that 1963 meditation on DAVID A. HOLLINGER, a Fellow American national destiny, fashioned as a weapon of the American Academy since in the black struggle for civil rights, King repeatedly 1997, is the Preston Hotchkis Pro- mobilized the sanctions of both Protestant Chris- fessor of American History at the tianity and the Enlightenment.1 Like the great ma- University of California, Berkeley. jority of Americans of his and every generation, He is the immediate past President of the Organization of American King believed that these two massive inventories of Historians. His publications in- ideals and practices work together well enough. But clude The Humanities and the Dy- not everyone who has shared this basic conviction namics of Inclusion Since World War II understands the relation between the two in quite (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Solidar- the same terms. And there are others who have de- ity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, picted the relation as one of deep tension, even hos- and Professional Af½liation in the Unit- tility. Protestant Christianity, the Enlightenment, ed States (2006), and “After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Ecumenical Prot- and a host of claims and counterclaims about how estantism and the Modern Ameri- the two interact with one another are deeply con- can Encounter with Diversity,” stitutive of American history. We often speak about Journal of American History (2011). “the religious” and “the secular,” or about “the © 2012 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences 76 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00130 by guest on 02 October 2021 heart” and “the head,” but American life accommodation. The bulk of the men and David A. as actually lived beneath these abstrac- women in control of American institu- Hollinger tions has been much more particular and tions–educational, political, and social– demands scrutiny in its historical density. have sought to retain the cultural capital The United States, whatever else it may of the Reformation while diversifying have been in its entire history as a subject their investments in a variety of opportu- of narration, has been a major site for the nities and challenges, many of which engagement of Protestant Christianity came to them under the sign of the En- with the Enlightenment. This engagement lightenment. The legacy of the Enlight- was–and continues to be–a world-his- enment in much of Europe, by contrast, torical event, or at least one of the de½ning played out in the rejection of, or indif- experiences of the North Atlantic West ference to, the Christianity to which the and its global cultural extensions from the Enlightenment was largely a dialectical eighteenth century to the present. Still, response, even while state churches re- the United States has been a uniquely mained ½xtures of the established order. conspicuous arena for this engagement In the United States, too, there were peo- in part because of the sheer demographic ple who rejected Protestant Christianity. preponderance of Protestants, especially But here the legacy of the Enlightenment dissenting Protestants from Great Britain, most often appeared in the liberalization during the formative years of the society of doctrine and Biblical interpretation and long thereafter. Relatively recent and in the denominational system’s func- social transformations can easily blind tioning as an expanse of voluntary associ- contemporaries to how overwhelmingly ations providing vital solidarities mid- Northern European Protestant in origin way between the nation, on the one hand, the educated and empowered classes of and the family and local community, on the United States have traditionally been. the other. The upward mobility of Catholic and Jewish populations since World War II The sharper church-state separation in and the massive immigration following the United States liberated religiously de- the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965–producing ½ned af½liations to serve as intermediate millions of non-Protestant Americans solidarities, a role such af½liations could from Asia, Latin America, and the former less easily perform in settings where reli- Soviet lands–have given the leadership gious authority was associated with state of American society a novel look. To be power. Hence in addition to orthodox, sure, there have long been large numbers evangelical Protestants who have been of non-Protestants in the population at more suspicious of the critical spirit of large, but before 1960, if you held a major the Enlightenment, American life has leadership position and had real opportu- included a formidable population of “lib- nities to influence the direction of society, eral” or “ecumenical” Protestants build- you most likely grew up in a white Prot- ing and maintaining religiously de½ned estant milieu. The example of King is a communities even as they absorbed and reminder, moreover, that the substantial participated in many aspects of modern population of African Americans has long civilization that more conservative Prot- been, and remains, largely Protestant. estants held at a distance. As late as the In the United States, the engagement of mid-1960s, membership in the classic Protestant Christianity with the Enlight- “mainstream liberal” denominations– enment most often took the form of Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, 141 (1) Winter 2012 77 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00130 by guest on 02 October 2021 The and so on–reached an all-time high. secularists in disguise, as well as the feel- Accommo- Because educated, middle-class Ameri- ing among ecumenical parties that their dation of Protestant cans maintained Protestant af½liations evangelical co-religionists are sinking the Christianity well into the twentieth century, the true Christian faith with an albatross of with the Enlighten- Enlightenment was extensively engaged anachronistic dogmas and alliances forged ment within, rather than merely beyond, the with reactionary political forces. These churches. Had the educated middle class quarrels, shaped in part by the campaign moved farther from Protestantism, the for a “reasonable Christianity” waged by cultural capital of the Reformation would Unitarians early in the nineteenth century, not have been preserved and renewed to continue to the present day, sharply distin- the degree that made it an object of strug- guishing the United States from the his- gle for so long. torically Protestant countries of Europe. The intensity of the Enlightenment- The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Protestant relationship in America result- and the Scandinavian nations have long ed also from the discomforts created by been among the most de-Christianized in the very church-state separation that the world. The United States really is dif- encouraged the flourishing of religious ferent. Accordingly, the copious literature af½liations. The United States is the only on “secularization” often treats the Unit- major nation in the world that still oper- ed States as a special case.4 ates under an eighteenth-century consti- Never was the United States a more tution, one that, anomalously in the gov- special case than it is today. Indeed, con- ernance cultures of even that century, temporary American conditions invite makes no mention of God. The U.S. fed- renewed attention to the historic accom- eral government is a peculiarly Enlight- modation of Protestant Christianity with enment-grounded entity, and for that the Enlightenment. An increasingly prom- reason has inspired many attempts to inent feature of public life is the af½rma- inject Christianity into it, or to insist that tion of religion in general and of Protes- God has been there, unacknowledged, all tant Christianity in particular. Republican along.2 candidates for of½ce especially have been The role of liberal religion in American loquacious in expressing their faith and history is too often missed by observers ½rm in declaring its relevance to secular who consider the consequences of the governance. Michelle Bachman, Mike Enlightenment only outside religion and Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Richard Perry, recognize religion only when found in its Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum are most obscurantist forms.3 The fundamen- among the most visible
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