Protestants, Evangelicals, and the Religious Order: Christianity and Political Conservatism in the United Kingdom and United States from 1530 to 1950

An Honors Thesis Presented by Duncan Mayer Robb to Curriculum and Honors Committee Department of Political Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree with honors of Bachelor of Arts University of Oregon June 2009

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Craig Parsons Second Reader: Dr. Joseph Lowndes

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The British monarch holds a number of titles and distinctions. “Defender of the Faith and

Supreme Governor of the Church of England” is only one of them and carries little practical importance – no more than “Commandant-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force” or “Lord High

Admiral of the Royal Navy.” But, the former distinction, bestowed upon all Sovereigns of the

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is perhaps the most obvious example of the tie that exists between Church and State there.

However, while this link is born of a historic symbiotic relationship between the Church of England and British government, politics and public life today have a distant association with religious matters. Prayer in schools, though mandated by British common law, is often not practiced daily, weekly, or even monthly (Lords 19 Apr. 2007). While Church of England bishops do sit in the House of Lords, which indeed possesses some real power, most notably derived from its judicial authority roughly equivalent to the American Supreme Court, the upper house’s power and influence pales in comparison to that of the House of Commons across the hall (Nash). Even in this role, some call bishop posts in the Lords “anomalous and not seriously defensible” as bishops rarely use the political forum to make their views on public policy known

(Church and State 2002). Religious figures have little ability to mobilize members of their faith around a political cause, and religious considerations in voter behavior have been declining since the early 20th century (Miller and Raab). “So You Want to be a Christian?”, a reality television program that aired on BBC One as recently as summer of 2008, showed participants attempting to find God, a goal that is portrayed as novel and entertaining, similar to the attitude found in

American reality shows depicting people who are trying to lose weight or become more attractive. Tony Blair, the most recent ex-British Prime Minister, had his devout Christian beliefs kept “under wraps” by political conventions as well as his staff (Aitken, 60). 3

In contrast, the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America assures that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” In this line, the most basic standard of separation between Church and State in the U.S. is established. Yet like Britain through all but the last 100 years or so, the

United States, since its inception, has witnessed a strong correlation between religious and political interests and influence. Unlike Britain today, that correlation continues to act as a potent force in the political dialogue in the U.S. In 2005, the Christian element of the Republican Party came to the forefront with Terryi Schiavo’s right-to-life/right-to-die case. Politicians to the national level participated in heated debate over the issue, many espousing faith-based morals protecting the life of all people. The scope of the debate embodied the tie between religious interests and political ones, with speculation that many conservative politicians raised the alarm because they felt their electoral base would respond positively (Kuhn). The 2008 election year saw the ratification of California’s Proposition 8, amending the state’s Constitution and banning marriage among same-sex couples. The Mormon Church poured $20 million into the Yes on 8 campaign, even though Mormons make up only 2% of California’s population (Kirchick). This too exemplified the formidable power of religious interest in politics.

Historically in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom, religious interests have had a strong place in political party alliances. After the English Reformation, Britain was set on a new path whereby progressive interests of varying intensities began aligning with the

Whigs, while conservative Protestant supporters of the Church of England and the aristocracy coalesced under the Tories. The alliances remained strong for some time, but we can also see a huge decline in Christian influence in the British Conservative Party after the turn of the 20th century (Miller and Raab). Today, the American Republican party is still seen as an ally of 4

Christian values in the United States, excepting southern Dixiecrats who remain from a time when the Democrats were the party of moral conservatism. In Great Britain, however, the link that existed between conservatives and religious interests has dissolved significantly. There are still rumblings of former ties – William Hague, a Conservative Minister of Parliament, has recently been crusading to attract more Christian voters to the Conservative party for example, arguing that God is, indeed, a Tory (Vallely 22) – but the conflation of the two is nothing like in the U.S. This is curious, because the two countries share similar political and economic structures, and in fact as I have just briefly outlined Great Britain carries with it a much richer tradition of Christian influence. What were the circumstances which led to the disaffiliation of the political right with the conservative Christian values in the United Kingdom while the same association in the United States remained unaffected?

This paper will not chronicle the striking rise of the religious right in the U.S. or any mirroring movements in Britain. Scholarly works reflecting upon religious influence in

American politics since the second half of the 20th century are numerous and extensive, and while I will make note of some additional stories which pick up after mine leaves off at the conclusion of this essay, I need not tell the same story myself. What I will describe is the back story that has set the stage for what we see now as a stark contrast between religious involvement in Europe (and in my case specifically the United Kingdom) and the United States of America.

Put another way, we see today the patterns of Christian power in conservative American politics

(which is quite formidable) and in the U.K. (which is nothing of the sort), and this paper will let us see what events took place in the modernization of the two countries that led to these current realities. Looking back through history with a more powerful microscope reveals interesting patterns that can help explain patterns that we see today. 5

I will argue that Christian turmoil in mid 19th century Britain created a permanent rift between the top-down religious establishment and the increasingly large and tolerant middle class, causing religious divisions in politics to be replaced by class divisions soon after the turn of the millennium. Christian values the U.S. remained strong from bottom-up activism in attempts to gain legitimacy and control while reconciling with a neutral political atmosphere and a changing social climate, culminating in the evangelical realignment with conservative politics after the New Deal.

To address the question, I researched and analyzed secondary texts covering different elements of British and American political and religious history to locate trends and congruencies that I hope are only apparent after my extensive examination. In support of this, I have access to the archives of British parliamentary records from as far back as 1803. I wanted to pull out and summarize the specific situations which led to the differing political and religious paths in these two countries. Be the end of my paper, I hope to have made clear not only what set the background for American Christian political activism and discouraged the same in the U.K., but I want to imply that these same realities – enfranchisement, establishment, and top-down versus bottom-up social activity, have implications in public matters beyond religion. Indeed, I feel that my findings could explain differing levels of demographic participation in other areas between these two countries as well, if not others.

Some Qualifications

As this writing covers a wide period of history, the political label of England and its relation to Scotland, Ireland, and Wales changes amidst the other occurrences that I will focus on. As such, I will refer to England in some parts, Great Britain in others, and the United 6

Kingdom as well. Two reasons contribute to this: one is that at as England, Ireland and Scotland become more unified it is awkward to refer to England or Great Britain as the sole actor in the group of nations; the other is that the research I cite will use one of the three labels, and in order to cite the information correctly I cannot assume that an author’s observations referring to Great

Britain, for example, could also be applied to Ireland. That said, maximum effort has been made to prevent this complication from detracting from the conclusions reached in the paper.

As religion will be referred to innumerous times, I feel it necessary to define the term so that we may use it confidently. I will borrow a definition that I have seen used exactly or approximately in many of the texts that I have read: “A religion is an integrated system of beliefs, lifestyle, ritual activities, and institutions by which people give meaning to (or find something in) their lives by orienting themselves to what they take to be holy, sacred, or of ultimate value” (Corbett, 7). With this definition applied to Christianity in this essay we will see how the Christian system of faith contributed to the decisions I focus on and emphasize as the main vehicles with which Christian influence was lost in the United Kingdom and retained in the

United States. I also like this definition because of its roots in social science – with references to human behavior and institutions – that might be overlooked with definitions more concerned with religious studies.

In finding a correlation between religion and politics, or lack thereof, I will be looking at a number of trends. First, the correlation of public policy goals between the dominant Christian interests of the time and the national government. How pleased were devoutly Christian citizens of the U.K. and the U.S. with policy changes and administrative action? Note that I did not say I would look for links in the goals between the government and the Christian establishment, as these two things are by definition the same in the case of the U.K. Dominant Christian interests 7 include more than one Christian establishment and more closely reflect the interests within the general population. Rhetoric from popular political and religious leaders is also telling. As mentioned above, Tony Blair steered clear of Christian oratory, whereas early in Great Britain and in the contemporary United States such practice would be common and generally looked upon favorably. Thirdly, I will measure the success of religious movements in their attempts to change the policy of the government. When the views of the Christian public and government do not align, I am interested to see if the Christian interests can incite change. Examples of instances where Christian mobilization can strong-arm policy into place are useful in noticing trends in religious alignment with party politics.

Britain: Setting the Stage

Before the Reformation, religion and the state were largely synonymous and interrelated.

The state of religious affairs in England was for the most part strong and vibrant until the drama concerning Henry VIII’s marital status began in 1532. Oxford University professor Christopher

Haigh uses some measures of vitality that hopefully will be sufficient in allowing us to draw this conclusion.

If charitable donation is any measure, we can see that, from commoners to aristocrats, proper Tudor subjects were devout Catholics, at least in letter but many also in spirit, at the time when Henry VIII ascended to the throne. Depending on the region, between 48 and 70 percent of deceased laymen and women bequeathed funds to their local perish or the Catholic Church in the early 1530s (Haigh 29). If literature is an indicator, we can draw the same conclusion. In 1530,

Catholic scholar and monk Richard Whitford penned a bestselling book which detailed what he believed to be appropriate prayer and worship habits for the common household. The guide, 8 entitled A Work for Householders, or for them that have the Guiding or Governance of any

Company, successfully tapped into what he and his companions had perceived correctly to be the common trends of religious practice across most of England. These trends, characterized by frequent prayer, devotion to the English Church, and involvement in the local perish, were prescribed and elaborated on in this popular piece (Haigh 25). Additionally, parishioners were usually eager to lend their craft expertise to the longevity of both their local church’s structure and interior, and commonly attended services themselves even after putting in extracurricular work (Haigh 32; 37).

We must also note that religious matters and political matters were difficult to distinguish. Leading into the Reformation, the Church and politics were inexorably intertwined.

Clergy were not taxed or tried by the government but rather by Rome, and the bureaucracies within and controlling the 18 English dioceses1 were massive. Writs were in place which allowed the King and the Church to transfer legal suits from the jurisdiction of one to another, each careful to avoid too much encroachment. The balance between civil and ecclesiastical authority was important (Prior 860). The Church was wealthy and powerful, however the practical influence of the king over Rome was formidable in terms of soft power and political clout (Haigh

6). Still, the monarchy relied on the Church for wealth and propaganda in times of war or conflict, which were frequent. In matters of public law, as Haigh notes, “Religious change was governed by law, and law was the outcome of politics” (Haigh 7). The Church had a vested interest in the proceedings of English government and the evolution of the monarchy. Politics were also greatly influenced by the intricate relationships and agendas between the clergy and the royalty across many European countries in acts of statesmanship, meaning the interaction

1 This relatively arcane term simply refers to an ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of one bishop. An alternative word is a “bishopric.” 9 between Rome and the monarchs were by no means grounded in what was best for the peasants of the time.

Noble and clerical aristocracy also played an important role. Today, the House of Lords is regarded by many as a remnant of the old aristocrats – the order which defended the Catholic

Church before the break with Rome and the Church of England afterward. Its peers, the Right

Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and

Northern Ireland in Parliament Assembled, are critical in the story we are about to see.

Aristocracy in Britain, as have many aristocracies in history, guarded its power jealously. This tendency is entirely common – it is to be expected that those in positions of authority wish to continue reaping the benefits of their social and political power – but in the Britain unlike the

U.S. this power encompassed religion as well. The preservation of aristocratic power there, it will follow, had the important externality of creating disillusionment with the Church among the common people.

Political interests in Catholic England could not easily be fit into the scheme of what we now know as party politics. As there was no legitimate alternative to the authority of the King, there was no cause to organize political opposition. Once Henry VIII separated England from the

Catholic Church, however, this was no longer the case. Boundaries began to form: the nobles and aristocracy in the House of Lords and in the Church mostly followed the King, more willing to change their Christian doctrine than fall into his disfavor. Some, however, stood against the change in the King’s spiritual preference. Many devout Catholics felt the need to defend the

Church as a “spiritual and political association,” the tried and true law of the land that was now under threat (Prior 861). 10

What became the Protestant Church of England split English allegiances – those who still held commitment to Rome versus Protestants who were loyal to, or at least fearful of, Henry VIII and most of his immediate successors (Grew 57). Still, it was not immediate that the Protestant voice became organized against the old Catholic guard, since no unified interest existed originally as Henry’s break with Rome was abrupt and not fomented by significant popular uprising but rather by his own personal agenda. English subjects adhered to the Crown’s mandate on religious issues out of necessity, but did not necessarily subscribe to the new doctrine of the Church of England, at least not right away. The new Protestant order had trouble finding legitimacy in the minds of common peasants (Grew 57), a trend made clear when noting the state of English parishes in the early 1550s under Edward VI. Churches lay empty even on

Sundays and fell into financial disarray due to lack of contribution, and the preamble of the

Uniformity Act in 1552 lamented the fact that people “abstain and refuse to come to their parish churches” (Haigh 182). Clerical recruits were also sparse, indicating that Protestant buy-in from the educated people was falling short. This is not to say that overall religiosity was waning at this point, but rather the opposite, that English citizens were fervent about their traditional faith and religion and politics were completely integrated.

The Politicization of Christianity

While the episode which led to the creation of the Church of England and the dissolution of the Catholic monasteries had a profound effect on the path of English history, it did not directly affect the religiosity of England beyond its iteration of Christian doctrine. That is to say, the English population was still given to religious practice and the worship of God, only now law-abiding subjects worshiped under the Protestant doctrine of the Church of England, and 11

Catholics continued to resist the mandate of the crown. What took place from 1532 until the

Glorious Revolution could be characterized as a political struggle, in which the matters of faith and Christian values were now factors contributing to the support of the crown and class alliances. Political parties would be more firmly established, and the link between conservatives and the defense of the traditional Catholic Church would emerge.

Conservative Catholics maneuvered to restore the link with Rome. This Catholic interest, however, consisted of two distinct motives. True devout followers believed that humans should only be concerned with obeying the doctrine of Christ, not redefining it, and wanted to restore what they viewed as England’s roots in “True Religion” (Prior 861). In the years leading up to the English Civil War, Catholics supported the crown, as Charles I was the most promising candidate to bring Rome back to England with his marriage to the Catholic Princess Henrietta

Maria of France. Aristocrats worked to restore the stability which had benefited their lineage and brought their families close to the English thrown (Prior 863). While the end goal of these two interests was the same, it was coincidental; brought on by the fact that the King in power happened to present the potential to lead England back to Catholicism. But both elements shared their placement on the traditional side of “a fundamental tension over civil and sacred authority”

(Prior 855). Here we see how religious and political interests are distinguishable for the first time in modern English history. True religious conservatives, who remained stoic in their ecclesiastical practices, were paired with the landed gentry who had benefited from the redistribution of wealth after the dissolution of Catholic monasteries (Grew 83), and thus supported the crown for political over doctrinal reasons. While it would be a stretch to call this a political “party” as yet, interests were at this point were nevertheless divided along and defined by politics and ecclesiastical concerns. 12

Protestants, being the force of reform as opposed to Catholic conservatism, also began to attract allies as alignments between the royalists and the parliamentarians took shape in the first half of the 17th century. At least two generations had passed since the Church of England had split from the Catholic Church, and those who had been raised Protestant, especially in the lower classes, were now locked in a battle for representation against the Catholic-leaning gentry, who benefited from the crown. The real reformers within this Protestant movement were extremely religious; more so than Catholic aristocracy whom they bemoaned for their greed and perversion of true faith with earthly wants. Protestant ministers overtly preached political behavior to the populace. They encouraged independent thought and the clarity to see past the corrupt aristocracy still addled by Catholic dogma (Haigh 182).

The English Civil War, which lasted from 1642 until 1651, was the manifestation of the build-up of conflict between the supporters of the Catholic monarchy and parliamentary

Protestants elected democratically from a largely Protestant public. Charles I’s royalists attempted to defend the monarchy from the army of the Long Parliament, which represented anti-Catholic, Protestant reformer ideologies found commonly among the British public. The parliamentary and Protestant alliance was lead by Oliver Cromwell, an ardent Protestant who exemplified the piousness of the ultra-religious reformers (Donagan 120). The ultimate victory of the Parliamentary forces meant that authority in British government now lay with Parliament which more accurately represented a cross section of the British public as the lower house, the

House of Commons, was elected (albeit at this point only by the landed population). The

Cromwellian Parliament, though short lived, became almost theocratic – Cromwell’s devout followers in government attempted to lead Britain down a path more religiously pious than most nationals had the taste for (Smith 8). The Protestant victory had come about through a relatively 13 strong alliance of anti-Catholic and anti-authoritarian interests, not popular desire for theocratic,

Protestant zealotry.

The Protestant parliament-led movement now had some affiliation with class demands for liberal political rights, but only a partial one. Dramatically increasing literacy and education levels among the lower classes lead to an outburst of suffrage demands (Grew 66). Additionally, increases in trade brought on by a new ease of communication afforded by literacy created an expanding merchant class, who cared little for royal taxation and preferred a parliamentary rule.

Groups crusaded for householder or universal manhood suffrage in the late 1640s. These efforts by the lower classes were short lived, however, and from 1660 until well into the 18th century efforts for suffrage were spotty (Grew 66). Still, the expanding electorate had reason to support the Protestant parliament against the Catholic conservatives and the Crown. Economic and political motives had therefore joined with religious ones on the left side of the political spectrum as well as the right.

It was from the ascendency of James II to the throne of England in 1681 that what became known as England’s first political parties, the Whigs and Tories, first earned their labels.

James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II and a Catholic, sought to assume the crown upon

Charles II’s impending death. The Protestant-controlled Parliament, foreseeing the threat of a

Catholic monarch, attempted to pass the Exclusion Bill, which aimed to forbid James from assuming the throne. Supporters of Parliament’s bill became known as the Whigs, while supporters of the crown were called Tories. Charles II, knowing the bill was likely to pass in the

Protestant Parliament largely made up of middle class landowners, used his royal prerogative to dissolve Parliament before passage. When another Parliament was elected, again Protestant and liable to exclude James II from ascendency, Charles dissolved it once more (Grew 60). 14

It was in this way that another conflict brewed between the Catholics and the Protestants, aristocracy and the lower and merchant classes, conservatives and reformers, which would come to a head in 1688 with the ascendency of the Dutch William of Orange and the Parliamentary army in the Glorious Revolution. When the conflict ended and William III assumed the English thrown, the Catholic effort to restore the English Catholic state ended unsuccessfully (Bradley

146). Not only that, but the Protestant William managed to unravel what many were afraid was becoming a new era of royal absolutism in Charles II’s reign (Goodlad 10). Whereas the Crown until now had maintained that it was “lord spiritual” over the kingdom, Protestants and parliamentarians argued it was “lord temporal,” in that the rules and laws of the land still applied

(Pesante 55). In this way, the division that had developed between wealthy supporters of the

Church and that of the Protestant religion was solidified. The champion of Protestantism, supported by Parliament and Cromwellian zealots, prevailed against a man they feared would restore Catholic power (Goodlad 11).

The merchant classes which supported Parliament in these events in order to benefit from a liberalized economy would also stand to gain. Charles’ “encroachments” on trade had frustrated these citizens, causing them to support Parliament’s republican order (Pesante 56). The increased inflow of gold into England from the Dutch economy would encourage traders to continue their support for the Whig party of reform (Quinn 474). As trade liberalized, Christian orientation became more and more a secondary to the economic and political interests of the merchant class – and eventually this class focus would overtake religious focus in party politics, but here we see only the first inklings of such a shift.

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A Divided Polity

These decades of religious and political turmoil had also seen increasing numbers of those who conformed neither to the Church of England nor the Catholic Church. While dissent had existed through the Reformation and the Civil war, they had existed underground for fear of retribution. However, with the weakening of the crown, these Dissenters, at the beginning of

William III’s reign, were a potent force in what was now called the Whig party and were core supporters of parliamentary government (Bradley 2).

Dissenters, having originally spawned as a concurrence to what early English Lutherans saw as the Church of England’s relatively shallow Protestantism, had evolved into part of a

Nonconformists alliance by the mid 18th century, and were viewed by most as “quintessential

Whigs”; the backbone of the party from 1688 onward (Bradley 91). Dissenters often led devout religious lives; they were more Protestant than the Church of England. These ideologues are usually identified with having contempt for the luxuries of the material world. However, their increasing economic liberty and amelioration added to their understanding and tolerance of the moderate half of the Nonconformist alliance (Bradley 88). As Pesante points out, there was also significant overlap between supporters of religious freedom (Dissenters) and supporters of free economic enterprise (Pesante 355). However, at his point, differences between Whigs and Tories were still wrapped in religious terms. While Whig politicians were now increasingly interested in suffrage, anti-marginalization, and tolerance, they still defined themselves as “generally composed of the more moderate churchmen, [as well as] the main body of protestant dissenters”

(Bradley 110). Whigs were still seen as supporters of the government in the first half of the century, which worked in their favor by attracting allies in Parliament, but their identity was becoming more and more involved with dissenting politics. This expanding element of the Whig 16 base helped to attract Church of England Protestants (nondissenters) to fill the pro-establishment

Tory void being left in the Tory ranks with the drop-off in Catholic education and influence in

Britain (Bradley 116). The pro-establishment Protestants would continue to congregate with the

Tories as time went on, and would be the reason for Tory power after 1750. Whigs hedged their bets on parliamentary democracy, liberty, and representation, fighting to end the marginalization that had always accompanied the nonconformity to which their constituency was sensitive, but were also increasingly interested in lowering barriers to commerce and limiting taxation by the crown as merchants increasingly gravitated to Whig ranks and gained influence (Hudson 569).

Through most of the 18th century dissenting and nonconformist politics allied with “low church” (a Catholic pejorative term for moderate Protestant) interests to hold a solid parliamentary majority (Bradley 105). While this did not constitute a unified alliance of interests at this point (the two would be very much at odds later on), it did ensure that English government did not move in a Catholic, conservative, or authoritarian direction (Bradley 117). The growing middle class demanded freedoms, not restrictions, and aligned mostly with the Whig agenda. The moderate element of nonconformity was often indifferent to religion, but aligned with Dissenters based on support of Parliament and occasional perceived piestic duty (Bradley 117).

Unfortunately for the Tories, these preferences would later make it difficult for them to legislate an increasingly independent polity, as we will soon see.

The Church of England, with the help of the nonconformists, had reached political supremacy in the early 19th century. The Catholics, now marginalized, were forced to use the system that Parliament had established in order to try to earn their political rights, as the power of the crown had almost completely faded, with no prospect for a Catholic-sympathizing monarch in sight. Legislation was no longer a matter of the Crown and Church establishment. It 17 was at the jurisdiction of the representative government, now enacted almost exclusively by

Parliament and no longer involving the Sovereign. The lines between Whig and Tory now defined, at least for the time being, politics were nevertheless characterized by religious alignment, whether or not real motives actually placed much weight in Protestant or Catholic theology (Bradley 118). While separation of religion and politics had not yet taken hold, we see the moderate part of the nonconformist movement moving closer to secularism and the “High

Church Tories” consolidating their allegiances (Bradley 112), taking seed in the British political environment.

Fragmentation of the Church of England

During the first part of the 19th century, the English state was staunchly and overtly

Protestant. Between 1809 and 1824, established Protestant churches received an unprecedented amount of direct financial support from the government (Brown, S.J. 47). Parliament now in fact looked to make sure that only Catholic students attended the few Catholic schools in order to control the spread of the religion (Commons 28 Aug. 1807). Protestantism, once locked with

Catholicism in a struggle for allegiance within government and the English peasantry, was now firmly entrenched as the dominant religious doctrine, and the Church of England was the unchallenged (but still resented by some) religious authority in Britain.

So much was this the case, in fact, that the Tory party, once a bastion of conservative

Catholics who still fought for old hierarchy and royal supremacy, now found new loyalty in well- to-do Protestants who vied to preserve their own social and political structure. Protestant aristocrats now had a vested interest in maintaining the social structure and policies that benefited them. Additionally, because of the secondary social and political status now held by 18

Catholics (there was outrage in Parliament that in some places in Ireland Protestant and Catholic servants actually lived together (Commons 14 May 1805)), Catholic political influence was truncated and replaced in the Tory ranks by staunch Church of England supporters. Tories, therefore, were often at the heart of monetary support for churches in England, as the strength of the Protestant church now directly affected the stability and order of the country (Brown, S.J.

47). The social hierarchy that the Catholic Church had offered conservatives in the 17th century was now, by the early 1800’s, supported by the thing that had uncoupled Rome and London in the first place. The name of the authority and style of doctrine had changed, moderately, but surface-level religious values hid many Britons’ real motives for political and religious alignment – their affinity for or skepticism of societal conflict and progressive lawmaking. With the lines now drawn between Tory conservatism and Whig tolerance and reform, politics began to drive a wedge between the State and the Church, until the link between the two was only a nominal consideration.

Catholic emancipation

By 1815, Church of England officials were beginning to sense real threats to the

Protestant empire. Chaplain Richard Yates published a work entitled The Church in Danger, which detailed what he perceived to be factors which threatened the stability of the Protestant order (Brown, S.J. 43). He, like many Tories, valued the national unity that religious harmony brought to the country, and saw anti-Protestant establishment sentiments, usually allied with the

Whigs, as extremely threatening to institutionalized norms and values. Further, many Tories insisted that they would persevere in the face of a momentarily misguided flock, and that they were “not blinded to those dangers which threaten both Church and State” (Common 24 Apr. 19

1812). These “dangers” consisted of anti-establishment Whigs (though now anti-established

Protestant instead of anti-Catholic as a result of the shift of power to a now wealthier Protestant aristocracy) who were still made up of some dissenting and but mostly moderate liberal (and secular) voices (Brown, S.J. 43), though their partnership with the Church of England had dissolved. Tories saw individualists as selfish and misguided. They feared that secular tampering with the church meant disrupting the glue of society (Prior 871). However, as the Church of

England became more and more the symbol of authority and government power, it began to meet stiffer resistance. The Protestants were now engaged in a quest for uniformity across all of Great

Britain and Ireland, but may have bitten off more than they could chew.

Around the turn of the century, religious unity was made into a pertinent political issue when efforts to unify England and Ireland ran aground due to the tenacity of Irish Roman

Catholicism. The Act of Union in 1801 was originally intended by Protestant politicians, mostly

Tories, as a route by which the Irish Reformation could conclude, as Irish Protestants were not having as much success with converting their countrymen and women as English Protestants had hoped (Brown, S.J. 60). Political unity, it was feared, was doomed if the Church of England and the Irish Catholic majority were at odds. As pressure for unity mounted, Whigs in Parliament were beginning to see considerable support from those who put a higher priority on British and

Irish unity than Protestant dominance. Meanwhile, civil war was threatening to break out between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, as tensions had nearly reached a breaking point

(Brown, S.J. 61). The government had to choose between taking a hard line against Irish

Catholics at the cost of possible extended political instability in Ireland and appeasing Irish

Catholics to the disdain of Irish Protestants and most conservative English citizens and politicians. 20

Clergy like Yates, it turned out, had been right to fear for the Protestant establishment and social order. While Protestantism was relatively stable in England, reformation in Ireland by

1825 had completely stalled (Brown, S.J. 60), and despite considerable pressure from thousands of British citizens to force the issue, the government was not willing to risk civil war (Brown,

S.J. 61). Instead, in an act of unprecedented compromise, Prime Minister Arthur Wellesley (the

Duke of Wellington) and home secretary Robert Peel, leading the Tory party which had held nearly uninterrupted power in government since the 1750s thanks to loyal supporters of the

Church of England, introduced the Emancipation Bill on March 5, 1829 which proposed the removal of many of the discriminatory laws that had to this point dogged Catholics in Great

Britain and Ireland, not the least of which was the extension of voting rights from Protestants to

Catholics (Brown, S.J. 61).

Though conservative by nature, Peel specifically questioned the effectiveness of the

Protestant campaign in Ireland. “What progress have we made in Ireland in the propagation and establishment of religious truth, under the system of penal and disqualifying laws? Where are our conversions?” Peel asked (Brown, S.J. 61). The issue divided the House of Commons along the political and religious lines which we have already seen – Tory MPs, outraged by what they saw as spinelessness from their leadership (Brown, S.J. 75) urged for the Church and government to take a hard stance with the Catholic minority, while the Whigs crusaded for emancipation. When the Bill eventually passed, Protestants were outraged, Catholics were vindicated, and the government had, knowingly or not, removed from the Church of England any sort of justification for primacy and religious rhetoric. In the eyes of the public, Church officials had given in and allowed their most hated enemies the same rights as “true” Christians. It is worth noting here, however, that as a political organization the Tory Party still benefited from Church of England- 21 loyalist support. Peel’s policy decision here served to weaken the Church of England’s political capital, but not the Tory-Church connection.

The end of Tory rule

From here, Tories and Whigs further separated themselves and defined their doctrines.

The Tories clung to Church and King, the Whigs settled into their role working towards egalitarianism and liberty. Demands for new and farther reaching economic freedoms were still on the rise, contributing to the general liberalism that had already been pushed for by religious

Dissenters, though now the momentum was largely with the economic interest (Claeys 737).

New focuses on science and economic theory meant a shrink in radical dissent (though it still existed) and growth in the ranks of free market proponents. The Whiggish working class now called for rights, especially unions, a measure which pushed the wealthy further into the Tory column (Claeys 742).

The Whig position was also opportunistic, as the party now saw an opening in what had until now been the Tory juggernaught. As industrialization began to take hold, rural agriculturalists became increasingly disaffected and desperate in the face of new machinery which they feared would destroy their livelihoods, putting added pressure onto the Tory government already weakened by George IV’s recent death (Brown, S.J. 75). These citizens also saw the Protestant clergy, bolstered by government taxes, as an insult. As peasants struggled harder to provide for their families, the relative comfort of clergy, supported by public tithes, incensed many citizens (Holland 90). As a result, rashes of hatred toward the Church of England establishment broke out around the countryside. 22

The Captain Swing riots were, many say, the largest nail in the Tory coffin. Farmers and laborers descended en masse upon farms using thrashers and other industrial machinery in a violent procession, and utter chaos was unleashed upon the agricultural world, growing more severe through 1830 (Holland 88). While much of the hatred was manifested by desperation towards industrial mechanization, another large factor was the Anglican clergy, still receiving substantial tithe revenue even during economic difficulty for most of the nation (Holland 94).

According to Holland, only farmers received more violent action from Swing rioters than clergymen. This disorder made it impossible for the establishment to carry on.

To make matters worse, the Tory base was still in arms over the betrayal of the

Emancipation Bill, especially coming from the guardians of the Crown and the Protestant order.

All of this resulted in the dismantling of the Wellington’s government and an end to the current conservative order in 1830, with much of the English population now, if not aligned with Whig’s reform ideals, at least bitter toward the Church for betraying them and the Tory party for propping it up (Brown, S.J. 75). 75 years of the supremacy of Tory, Church, and King had ground to a halt.

Continued movement for progressive reform

With the new Whig government came an intense popular push to change from what many saw as a corrupt political and religious order. The Church had been effectively singled out as an enemy of the people, and its supporters “self-interested defenders” of a regime that saw the aristocracy fatten while the public wasted away (Brown, S.J. 76). When the new government introduced its Reform Act in 1831, it sparked heated and prolonged debate in Parliament –

Whigs lauded its promise of equality and justice, while Tories were terrified of what it would do 23 to what they held most dear: the Church, the monarchy, and the aristocratic social order. “If the

Church of England was to be pulled down, let it be pulled down by honest hands” (Commons 4

March 1830), pleaded Tory MP William Trant, maintaining that the Act was nothing more than a

Whig plot to seize on momentary animosity towards the Church for its own political gain.

Refusing to see the futility of their cause, conservative government officials continued to hold out and block the passage of the Act. Meanwhile, a cholera epidemic swept London and the

Church continued to sap the resources of the populous. In an 1832 vote, the House of Lords, still a bastion of aristocracy, overwhelmingly voted against the Act (Brown, S.J. 75). Whigs and reformers pounced on them, linking their foolishness to that of the Church and the old corrupt order. Thousands of disillusioned citizens rioted in the streets, destroying the property of the established churches. The Duke of Wellington, now finally sensing what many clergy had seen

15 years before, wrote in March of 1833: “The revolution is made…that is to say, that power is transferred from one class of society, the gentlemen of England, professing the faith of the

Church of England, to another class, the shopkeepers, being Dissenters from the Church, many of them Socinians2, others atheists” (Clark 413).

Along with this push for political reform, sentiments for liberty and equality jostled abolitionist rhetoric into the spotlight. Catholic emancipation now achieved, reformers within the

Whig party, including many Presbyterians such as the evangelical abolitionist William

Wilberforce, now focused on the treatment and condition of slaves and the concept of slavery, which they felt violated their stance on human rights (Brown, S.J. 77). The general election after the passage of the Reform Act in 1832 saw many dissenting clergy calling for their congregations to vote for abolitionist candidates only, and in May 1833 a newly elected and

2 Socinianism was a school of Unitarian thought that came about as early as the 1860s, which prescribed the utmost importance to reason and logic. Tinsley, Barbara Sher. “Sozzini’s Ghost: Pierre Bayle and Socinian Toleration.” Journal of the History of Ideas 57 (1996): 609-24. 24 reformed House of Commons introduced the Emancipation Act (Brown, S.J. 78). The Act’s passage in the August of that year marked a rise in power for dissenting Christian ideals, and cast conservative Protestants as behind the times in a Britain which yearned for humanitarian achievement. Again, progressive, anti-Church Whigs, both secular and dissenting Protestant, were pitted and won out against pro-establishment Tories.

Additionally, pressure was mounting for the downsizing of the established churches in

England as well as Ireland. In England, it no longer made any sense for emancipated non-

Protestant citizens to have to pay tithes to support the Church of England (Brown, S.J. 80). This state of affairs only further divided the lines between dissenting and Protestant supporters. In

Ireland, where the Protestant establishment was disproportionately large compared to the number of followers it had (Brown, S.J. 81), citizens pushed harder for the removal of mandatory tithes.

In response, the Whig government passed two parliamentary acts. One, in 1831, reversed state policy and decreed that Irish Catholic and Protestant children would be taught in the same schools. Before this, Protestant education had been a main factor in the converting of Ireland

(Brown, S.J. 82). The second, in 1833, reduced the size of the Irish Protestant hierarchy.

Importantly, in these matters, “Parliament did not claim to be legislating on the grounds of any religious principle, or adjudicating between different versions of religious truth. Rather, it was responding to Catholic political [italics are mine] pressure in Ireland” (Brown, S.J. 82-83). The

Whig government, in a break from Tory mentality had, at least to the public, removed religious matters from matters concerning the public good. The secular rhetoric served to remove the

Church from political dialogue – the latest in a long string of trends that would continue to marginalize religion in public matters. 25

The focus on civil liberties and equality continuing, part Scotland’s sizeable dissenting population began what they dubbed the “Voluntary movement.” The movement’s end goal was the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland, “voluntary” referencing that religious affiliation should have no bearing in state affairs but should be solely an individual’s voluntary decision

(Brown, S.J. 83). The tie between church and state was their principle enemy – not necessarily the Protestant nature of the Church of Scotland or for that matter any particular Christian denomination.

By 1833, the Voluntary Movement had spilled into England as well, but with a more diplomatic tact. Conditions in England did not yet lend themselves to the call for an outright abolition of the Church, and radical anti-Protestant sentiments enjoyed little validity in the government. Dissenting officials in England therefore came together and drafted a petition to the government which called for the redress of six specific grievances as follows:

1. The compulsory marriage ceremony in the Church of England.

2. The mandatory payment of church rates.

3. The imposition of the poor rate on dissenting chapels.

4. The lack of a civil registration for births and deaths (currently kept in the parish church).

5. The requirement that Dissenters be buried according to Anglican rites in parish

churchyards.

6. The exclusion of Dissenters from Oxford and Cambridge (Brown, S.J. 86).

All of these are centered around the sentiment that the church and the state were currently locked in an unholy union which removed from many people the ability to make a choice about which denomination they chose to adhere to. To Voluntary sympathizers, centuries of imposed religious order left little motivation or excitement which would predispose them to follow the official 26 doctrine in letter or in spirit. Instead, while the mainstream dissenting opinion did not call for the

Church to be disassembled outright, it did challenge the notion that it was needed in order to prop up a stable social order. At this point, a very real and palpable segment of the population was beginning to feel that religion’s place in public life was less and less important.

The Oxford Movement

While the Voluntary Movement was brewing in Scotland, another movement was taking shape at Oxford – one in support of the Church under siege. Oxford scholars, sons of aristocrats and landed gentry, were often more predisposed to support the conservative order, and the majority of their ranks could be counted as Tory votes (Brown, S.J. 98). With dire news coming from the north and feeling abandoned by their elected officials (Robert Peel had been the MP for the University of Oxford until Church loyalists organized a by-election and removed him from office after he supported Catholic emancipation), these monks and scholars began publishing short tracts in a series entitled Tracts for the Times in which they voiced support for Church authority and legitimacy (Brown, S.J. 99).

The “Tractarians” argued a number of points. Many addressed Church practices and beliefs and a large portion stressed that genuine doctrine could only be found pre-Reformation, a view which caused some Protestants to hold the Oxford authors at an arm’s length for their flirtations with Catholicism (Brown, S.J. 101), and eventually led to the movement’s collapse.

However, most important for us is that Tractarians tried from the very beginning to allay fears that the English Church and State were improperly joined. While Whiggish sentiments argued for individual liberty and democracy in the face of an imposed organized religion, Tractarians wrote that “the church had not been created by the state and did not exist to serve the interests of 27 the state” (Brown, S.J. 99). This stance could have represented an appeal to popular belief, though seems unlikely due to the already-unpopular nature of these Catholic-esque clerics, but regardless the impact is notable. For even conservative scholars, albeit ones who were loyal to the Church of England over the state, to argue for church and state separation is a landmark in the changing views of English citizens in the mid 19th century. If Church legitimacy for these men did not come from state affiliation, it certainly had nothing to do with it for many other members of the populace.

It is important to note here that separation of Church and State as argued by ecclesiastically minded scholars and clerics can be inspired by a way of thinking very much the opposite from how present-day supporters of the same cause approach the issue. As we will see again when we discuss the religious and political development in the United States, a branch of secularism emanates from the desire of clergy and those given to spirituality to avoid earthly, political interference into their pure, God-given faith. Whereas present-day secularists vie to keep religious doctrine out of public life, those involved in the Oxford movement likely wished to keep secular influence out of their Christian lives. Ironically, Dissenters had long ago held sought the same outcome. Being more religious than the establishment provided for, believers of minority religious views wished for the liberty to practice those views at will. Now, after the state has separated its interests from those of the Church of England, adherents to these once- standard Protestant principles feel that they must voice support for church-state separation to protect what is now their own minority view.

Though Tories gained a significant victory with a return to power in 1841, a victory for the established church in the eyes of many, its fall from grace would turn out to be irreversible.

While the Church was still a source of great passion and controversy in England, Scotland, and 28

Ireland, more politicians were realizing that enacting ecclesiastical legislation detracted from the legitimacy of the government. Robert Peel’s new government (which technically was the first

Conservative Party government by name), for example, did not aid the Church of Scotland on the eve of a massive departure of Presbyterian ministers to form the Free Church of Scotland

(Brown, S.J. 115-116). This movement stressed church independence from the state and the peoples’ inherent freedom to choose how to worship God. Meanwhile, the Church of England became an easy target for Voluntary movers as the Oxford Movement became heavily

Romanized leading to its collapse by 1845 (Brown, S.J. 120). Divisions within the Church made it impossible for them to show a united political front, and its political voice continued to diminish – the party with most of its loyalists now extremely hesitant to politicize church involvement for fear of popular retribution.

Implications of the Mid-19th Century Episodes

By 1845, the decline in power of Church of England, as well as the Church of Ireland and

Church of Scotland, was no longer a threat, it was reality. The Church of Ireland and Scotland were now minority organizations, and the Church of England had just been handed another humiliating political defeat. In what became the largest petitioning campaign in British history to that point, anti-Church activists forced the withdrawal of what had been last attempt from the

Peel’s Tory government to aid the Church’s waning influence (Brown, S.J. 122). This followed closely two other Church reform bills, the second much more modest than the first, which had attempted to secure more national funding for church extension. These had failed.

We see from these dramas of history the kaleidoscope from which the patterns of church- state relations in modern Britain today were produced. The established church, in its prolonged 29 effort for self-preservation, alienated its conservative political allies. The Protestant Church became ‘the man’ – the authority which common citizens had to fight against in order to realize their steadily progressing tolerances and incomes while safeguarding their livelihoods – much like Catholic church had been made to be seen beginning in the Tudor period. As the government, by British common law, still represented the Church, this meant that in order to maintain legitimacy with its own citizens politicians had to be wary of favoring certain religious interests over others. Make no mistake: at this point Christianity was still a staple in the lives of most of the public. However, there was no longer a uniform Christianity. Even Peel himself acknowledged that the “the population…was [now] too diverse in its Christian beliefs” (Brown,

S.J. 120). Its political capital spent, the Church could not rely on the government to shape

Christian beliefs around itself. The public wanted nothing to do with mandatory religious practices, and the mortally weakened Protestant aristocracy, with no powerful crown to find legitimacy, could not force them.

Church decline did not result from a premeditated plan by Whigs or Radicals to dismantle it. Dissenting beliefs sprang up from the bottom – and the dissenting political party simply took advantage of it. It was Tory attempts to legislate top-down established church involvement that created a fissure between religious interests and political ones. Conservative values, like in countless other progressive reforms in history, lagged too far behind popular sentiment, and the party of the Church was forced to jettison its religious legislative efforts in order to maintain a political threat itself. In all likelihood, Whig politicians were more interested in economic liberalization than religious freedom, but fomenting religious dissatisfaction proved a powerful weapon, and social and economic liberalizers made powerful allies. With industrialization now entirely underway in the United Kingdom, the common merchant, farmer, and craftsman 30 harbored angry sentiments toward religious presence in the state. And now that new wealth was pouring into the state, the newly empowered middle class would cement its skepticism in the modern British political arena forever.

Separation of Politics and Religion

For the rest of the 19th century, nonconformists argued for liberal religious and democratic reform. Beginning in the 1850s there was a strong religious revival movement in

Scotland and Ireland, and to a lesser degree in England (Brown, S.J. 215; 219; 222). Revival especially affected the working classes, however the religious passion translated more into nonconformist alignment than to Church of England loyalty (Rathbone 6). The revivalists created an equally strong reaction in conservatism though, catalyzed by rational thought in new scientific and economic theory (John Stuart Mill’s Economy of Nations and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution) (Brown, S.J. 226; 229). Progressive politics moved in a more secular direction, and the Whig Party was overtaken by the Liberal Party with the election of the

Viscount Palmerston in 1859 (Rossi 167). Dissenters were still included in the nonconformist ranks, but the proliferation of industrialization meant that they made increasingly more rational decisions concerning politics. The nonconformists that the Liberal Party relied on by the time

Liberal champion William Ewart Gladstone was elected for the first time in 1868 were economic and social liberals, skeptical of the meddling “mischief” of the Conservative Party (Windscheffel

6;13).

Gladstone was himself a devout Christian and had been a Peelite Tory until the late 1850s

(Brown, S.J. 250). His change of orientation from establishment to nonconformity, however, lost him his long-held seat in Oxford and resulted in his being elected MP in the decidedly industrial 31 and dominantly nonconformist South Lancashire (Brown, S.J. 251). Gladstone’s populist message, in which he appealed to working-class individualism and inclusion of a variety of

Christian faiths, was one of the first signs of the shifting political divisions from being based primarily around Christian conformity to being based around class (Wald 203). This change, however, was only just starting to take place, as Christian language was still a part public life

(Brown, S.J. 258).

The downfall of Gladstone’s Liberal government in 1874 came at the end of a series of religious conflicts between Christian conservatives and liberals (conformists and nonconformists). The increasingly diverse religious demographics in the U.K. made the government even less likely to back certain religious doctrine (Brown, S.J. 285). However, by the 1885 election, a time when the British Empire was at the height of its power, church establishment was once again the hot-button issue, and the Conservatives used the campaign slogan ‘the Church in danger’ (Brown, S.J. 313). Nonconformists rallied and elected Gladstone’s

Liberal Party to the majority once more, placing Gladstone in his old Prime Minister chair yet again. However, Gladstone’s infamous project, the Home Rule Act, which would created a semi- autonomous Ireland and disestablish the Protestant church there leaving way for the majority

Catholics to establish a state church created feverish divisions (de Nie 18).

Conservatives vehemently opposed the Bill, and as support was split within British

Protestantism and virtually nonexistent with Protestant Irish, it failed spectacularly (Brown, S.J.

323). The resounding call for continued political and religious unity with Ireland came to characterize the Conservative party which then held power for 20 years (Wald 206). While it was defeated, this first Home Rule Bill, of which there would be others (e.g., Shepard 564), indicated that the unprecedented wealth in late 19th century Britain ushered in equally unprecedented 32 attitudes of social liberty. The era saw a retreat of the Liberal Party from religious politics from the top, and social liberalization resulting from the industrial wealth of Britain from the bottom.

As the success of Victorian Britain produced ever more diverse marginalized classes, many of whom were dismissive of established institutions, the political system broke apart around the turn of the century (Brown, S.J. 378). Monumental scientific discoveries (wireless telegraphy, the atom, and the electron for example) contributed to the legitimacy of the rational universe at a time when religious allegiances their places in society were difficult to define, even for British citizens. When Queen Victoria died in 1901, Britain was witnessing the undermining of a party system built on religious cleavage (Wald 203). Nonconformists, confused and divided and having failed in their quest for a disestablished Ireland and lacking a platform large enough to maintain a national party, began to dissolve (Wald 215). The Church of England, attempting to survive in an era of immigration, scientific reason, and unprecedented ideological diversity, suffered from the same decline in interest as the nonconformist-Liberal union that had been there to challenge it for so many decades. The Conservative Party, its established church weakened and its opposition dwindling, began to drift its rhetoric away from its British Unionist, Protestant theme (Wald 217). The plethora of social classes now present in industrialized British society took the place of the religious classes of old, as the dominating parties found their constituencies too diverse to woo with Protestant or Anglican dogma. As the Liberal working class began to coalesce under the Labour party, a party whose very constitution includes incorporations of the various British labor unions, the Conservative platform, dominated by established religion for so long, could no longer hold as relevant its Church and State ties and began to focus on new, rational political rhetoric and policy (Lawrence 18).

33

The United States: Setting the Stage

The story in the United States would turn out to be very different from the assault on established religion that was to occur in its parent country. Christianity was, however, at the very root of America’s colonization by the British. Indeed, the very reasons why colonists wound up on the shores of the New World included no shortage of religious motives. Early years in the colonies were steeped with intense religious doctrine. To be a colonist, in fact, was to be a “pure”

Protestant. The Colonial Laws of Massachusetts listed severe capital punishments for those who, among other things, “worship any other god but the lord god” (Corbett and Corbett 29). We will see that while regime change eventually wrote religion out of political life in the U.S., the first

English settlers of American land were extremely devout in conviction.

The early Puritans who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony and landed at

Plymouth Rock between 1620 and 1630 were more Protestant than those who followed Church of England back across the Atlantic. Their cause for flight related to their displeasure with what they saw as impurities in the Church of England and the persecution they received back home as a result of their convictions. Puritans themselves did not totally agree on what was to be done with the Church, however. The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock wanted to separate from the Church of England completely, believing that the Protestants in England were not pure in their associations. The most intolerant of the Puritans, the Pilgrims wanted to be left to worship the way they felt it was meant to be without any interference from the old, oppressive establishment. Those who settled in Massachusetts Bay desired to stay affiliated with the Church of England nominally, but also to be free to practice their more divine form of the Protestant religion (Corbett and Corbett 32). Still, the principle purpose was the same: the British colonies 34 were founded as a way for those who felt marginalized by the Church of England and persecuted during the Catholic-leaning reigns of James I and Charles I to practice their religion in peace.

The Puritans saw themselves as much more than devout followers of Christ. In fact, they interpreted the Bible to say that the Jews who escaped from Egypt in the Exodus to find the

Promised Land were, in fact the Puritans themselves. England was Egypt, and the New World was the Promised Land promised to the disciples by God in the Old Testament. They made a

“covenant” with God, promising to set an example for the world by preaching His message in their new land (Corbett and Corbett 33). They considered themselves as beacons of light in a corrupt world. Interestingly, one could say that this sort of attitude has persisted in the United

States through the centuries with mantras like Manifest Destiny and the expanding American empire after World War II. Additionally, we see a similar relationship to a theme that hits much more closely to something we will discuss here: the covenant created between God and the

Puritans was mirrored by the “social contract” upon which the Declaration of Independence would be based.

Unlike the Protestants in England who, during this time, were relatively tolerant of individual freedoms (if for no other reason than to gain political alliance with more moderate

Englishmen), the Puritans acted under no such pretense. They were completely intolerant of other Christian doctrines, and exclaimed as such, as exemplified here by Nathaniel Ward, a prominent Puritan clergyman in 1647:

I dare take it upon me, to be the Herauld of New-England so farre, as to proclaime

to the world, in the name of our Colony, that all Familists, Antinomians,

Anabaptists, and other Enthusiasts, shall have free Liberty to keep away from us, 35

and such as will come to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the better (Miller

98).

The Salem witch hunts are often-cited examples Puritan intolerance. Very simply, these purists believed that they were the children of God, that they had been led to this land, and that they must strive to act in ways that bring them as close to what God intended as possible (Corbett and

Corbett 36). The Puritans wanted nothing to stop them from fulfilling their destiny.

As time went on, the Puritans in most of the colonies looked on with disgust as religious tolerance spread in the motherland. But the trend soon found its way to American shores. By the

18th century, the purest forms of Puritanism had all but fallen out of practice. Christian fervor had tapered off, leaving behind a plethora of religious denominations of which none approached a majority. While underlying Christian habits and trends would continue as a legacy, the Puritan form would fail. During the days leading up to the American Revolution, only around as little as six percent (Reichley 106) to 20 percent (Fink and Stark) of the colonies’ population actually belonged to church congregations, though most identified with a religious denomination of some kind3. Shortly the founding of the country, separation of church and state would be written into the Bill of Rights, creating a fundamental difference between the American and British experience: espousers of Christianity in the United States would need to use politics to influence religion from the ground up. It would not be imposed from the top down. Religion would become the liberated voice of the people, not the oppressive voice of the establishment.

3 Reichley notes here that the low percentage of congregation members had to do with “strictness of church standards for membership,” not low church attendance or dwindling religiosity. The statistic is used in both texts as a way to measure religious pluralism in the colonies. 36

The Beginning of Church and State Separation

In the northern colonies, tolerance toward diverse religious practices became more prevalent early on. From a modern, humanist perspective we may be tempted to attribute this to respect for diversity. But, as it turns out, this tolerance was not born from nothing of the sort, and instead was seen as an effective method to segregate impure Christians from Puritan thought.

Why, some speculated, should we bother forcing men of substandard conviction to see our ways?

It was a waste of their time and of God’s; only resulting in impurity as “authentic conversion”

(Neff) would likely not be achieved. Following this mentality, it became popular to argue, as

Puritan minster Roger Williams did in Rhode Island as early as 1636, for the complete separation of the church from all other sources of authority as a way to avoid corrupt interference and allow the church to be as pure and holy as possible (Bozeman 44).

Thomas Jefferson, as it now appears, was not the first colonist to push for the separation of church and state. Williams was a Boston resident until his vocal distaste of persisting affiliation with the Church of England earned him countless enemies (Field 355). Amid a number of controversies involving his insistence on separation from the Church, Williams was exiled from Massachusetts and made his way north to settle in Narragansett Bay, an inlet in what would later become Rhode Island. Williams, the founder of the northerly “towne” of Providence, established his settlement in a “livelie experiment” in which he hoped to allow residents to be free of the polluting aspects of church establishment and exist under “social compacts” to govern their daily lives (Bozeman 44-45; Corbett 40). No church authority would command “Providence

Plantation” settlers to adopt certain practices. Of course, Williams was a Puritan himself, and the frame of personal liberties under which he founded his establishment were intended to allow its denizens to worship God with more fervor, not less. 37

Still, Williams exhibited progressive preferences. His dealings with Native Americans, for example, were respectable attempt to be fair given the time period. Instead of simply occupying the land which currently housed “groups of wigwams in which red men gathered when convenient, and left when whim or fancy seized them” (Keary 250), Williams offered payment for their relocation. He posited that, since the colonies lay outside the Christian kingdom of the Church of England, the English sovereign had no “prerogative, with the mere stroke of his pen, to grant vast tracts of [land] to his subjects” (Field 355). The same tolerance turned out to apply to the settlers who chose to reside in Rhode Island. By 1651, residents who were attracted by the religious liberty offered by William’s social compacts were becoming disgruntled by the mix of other occupants flowing into the province. Northern Providence resident William Arnold wrote that “about these partes there comes to live all the scume the runne awayes of the country, which in tyme for want of a better order may bring a heavy burthen upon the land” (Bozeman 51). Rhode Island had become a refuge for those disenchanted with other colonial areas for a variety of reasons. Still, despite all sorts of logistical and cultural challenges, the “hated colony” of Rhode Island flourished under Williams’ theory of “soul liberty” (Bozeman 64). Williams was indeed a model of tolerance for his time, much easier to appreciate now than by his contemporaries in other colonies, from which he and his settlers were banished.

Make no mistake, however, that while at first glance one might conclude that Roger

Williams’ adamant conviction for the separation of church and state comes from religious moderation, nothing could be further from the truth. Williams was a strict adherent to reformed

Calvinist ideology – that which places the absolute sovereignty of God at the forefront of religious doctrine (Neff). He could not in good faith align with magistrates who believed that 38 they possessed divine prerogative through God – that prerogative was reserved for God Himself.

Williams explains:

…since God only openeth the heart . . . it seems to be an high presumption to

suppose that together with a command restraining from, or constraining to

worship, mat God is also to be forced or commanded to give faith, to open the

heart, to incline the will (Neff).

Pure Christian doctrine could not afford to be meddled with by greedy politicians or statesmen who would use religious pretenses for their own selfish dogma.

Similarly, Williams did not advocate for the conversion of “unpure” English settlers just as he did not did not advocate for the conversion of the Native Americans, not out of respect for their religion, but because he felt such efforts were hopeless. Pure faith was reserved for those who were predisposed to it:

Whether Gods great businesse between Christ Jesus the holy Son of God and the

Antichrist the man of sin and Sonne of perdition, must not be over, Zion and

Jerusalem be rebuilt and re-established, before the Law and word of life be sent

forth to the rest of the Nations of the World, who have not heard Christ: The

Prophets are deep concerning this (Neff).

It is striking that Williams’ zeal for his faith would produce a political doctrine that, 350 years later, would be used by the secular polity to argue just the opposite from what Williams intended: that religious law had no place in public life, not vice versa. Leading into the American

Revolution, liberal thought akin to what was incubated in Rhode Island spread rapidly. Almost as if by an accident of history, events had been put in motion to strike church from politics by the very people who, in the present day, would be expected to argue conversely. However, it is clear 39 that the distinction and division between church and state in the United States that resulted from

Roger William’s experiment in liberal thought would establish a culture whereby religious liberty was granted by the Founders knowing that the Christian religion did not need state support to flourish (Corbett and Corbett 75).

The Secular United States

While support for a secular government was in no way universal (it may have, in fact, been a minority viewpoint as there is little evidence that most colonists were extremely occupied with the issue), key players among those most important to the framing of the Constitution had strong convictions on the subject. Not surprisingly, many of those who were in favor of the

American Revolution and independence from Britain tended toward liberal views, and the

Founders were all of that crop. These liberals borrowed from English political labels and were called Whigs, though the most important issues in colonial politics were obviously not comparable to British politics. The loyalists, still called Tories, who still adhered to Crown and

Church were of conservative religious and social conviction – preferring the structure and sanctity of the Church of England and the sovereign to civil uprising. Consequently, this viewpoint was underrepresented in the drafting of the Constitution, leaving more liberal thinkers the chance to enact what they saw as the most advantageous relationship between church and state: none.

The Founders were Christians all, but to typically more rational degrees. Thomas

Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin were deists, while Alexander

Hamilton was more orthodox (Corbett and Corbett 58, 68, 79). Deists were quick to rely on rationalist, scientific thought over Christian divinity without feeling as if their morals were 40 corrupted. They believed an a “noninterventionist Creator, reliance on what reason can discern in the natural world, and skepticism about miracles, the scriptures as divine revelation, and the divinity of Christ” (Grasso 44). With deism’s strong focus on individual liberty, it is no surprise that these founders were in favor of a secular government. George Washington’s Christian doctrine seems contested (Cousins) with references to his religion-laden addresses but also the vagueness with which he used Christian verbiage (Corbett and Corbett 65). Also, in a scenario that laid groundwork for the disestablishment of religion in the newly independent colonial states, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were pitted against George Washington and Patrick

Henry in a fight within the Virginia state legislature over the ability of the state to tax in order to support the church (Corbett and Corbett 73). In the debate, Washington and Henry favored state support for the church, while Jefferson and Madison argued that state involvement would actually hurt the church. In framing the Constitution, Washington’s view was not shared by most framers, as they seemed to agree that the benefits of church and state separation – an autonomous church and no disagreement between states as to official doctrine – outweighed potential costs

(Corbett and Corbett 79).

When the Constitution was adopted, it was completely secular. There is no mention of

God with the exception of the format of the date (“the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven”), and there are only two other religious references, both in Article 6, one referring to an “Oath or Affirmation” and the other baring the use of a religious test being required to hold public office. The omission of religion was both due to pragmatism and a general consensus among the founders that religious liberty would in the end prove to be healthy for Christianity (Reichley 107). This consensus was born out of the success of religious liberalism first introduced to the colonies by the Providence 41 settlement. Christianity thrived even with no government support, and with individualist sentiments on the rise, it made perfect sense to the Founders to allow this freedom to continue. It may even be argued that the deism (sometimes bordering on secularism) of many Founders was pragmatic in itself (Reichley 104-105). It was easier to create a stronger central government, generate general consensus among signing parties, and maintain a diplomatically neutral international presence if religion was simply not addressed (Corbett and Corbett 79).

While the Founders considered including a Bill of Rights-type document in the

Constitution with a religion clause, the above reasons deterred them. Some who opposed the ratification of the Constitution actually used the absence of such a document as an argument for the Constitution’s rejection, though the tactic failed (Reichley 108). Once the Constitution was ratified, however, the new Congress set to work drafting what is now today the Bill of Rights.

After much debate, the verbiage of the First Amendment was decided, though the exact intensions of those who passed it are still debated to this day and for good reason, because it is likely that the approved version passed because neither side considered it sufficient to defeat their objective regarding established state religion. Note, however, that we do know that the entire Bill of Rights was only intended to apply to the federal government. Officials in Congress were well aware that the Bill of Rights would not interfere with states who had established

Anglican (Church of England) churches, which many did (Corbett and Corbett 70). In 1833 the last U.S. state, Massachusetts, ended its establishment of religion. However, as with all other states who did the same, this had nothing to do with First Amendment (it was instead a reaction from conservative Congregationalists who had had their establishment completely overrun by more liberal Unitarians (Reichley 111)). Only after the Supreme Court began interpreting the

14th Amendment’s due process clause as allowing application of other Amendments to the states 42

(e.g.: Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 in 1876) was it possible for government to actively regulate state religious matters.

Alexander Hamilton and the Christian Divide

Before the 19th century, religious and political lines in the United States were rather complicated. More orthodox versions of Christianity tended to side with Tories before the

Revolution (as they supported the English Church and Crown) whereas liberal deists (who eventually evolved into Unitarians (Adair and Harvey 312)) and other rationalists tended to be revolutionary. However, evangelical pietists, who were extremely religious, were nonetheless also in favor of independence because their version of Protestantism included focus on the individual to reach religious salvation (Corbett and Corbett 57). Additionally, as mentioned in the Great Britain discussion, pietists desired the freedom to worship unhampered by political regulation. After the revolution, conservatives tended to side with the Federalists in their quest for a more unified government, while liberal, individualist thinkers usually identified as anti- federalist. Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians, who resembled Puritan thought most closely, generally sided with Federalists as guardians of the establishment and social order

(Davis 714; Reichley 111; 178). As these denominations represented the majority of the

American population, Federalists held the presidency until 1801 with the swearing-in of

Democratic-Republican Party (the replacement of the anti-federalists) candidate Thomas

Jefferson. Democratic-Republicans were less finicky about religion, which correlated with their small-government, individualist philosophy. Democratic-Republicans also saw allies in evangelical Baptists and Methodists, who began gradually more attracted to ideas of 43 socioeconomic equality (Reichley 180). After the 1800 election where these cleavages became extremely evident, religion turned into a notable ingredient in party politics.

Alexander Hamilton, founder of the Federalist Party and possibly the most orthodox

Christian of the well-known Founders, made one of the first steps to form an alliance between political and religious interests. When his party lost control of the presidency, he attempted to form a Christian Constitutional Society which would serve the purpose of both “supporting the

Christian religion” and upholding “the Constitution of the United States,” while influencing politics to elect “fit [Christian] men” to public office (Reichley 104; Adair and Harvey 326). He lambasted Thomas Jefferson as “an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics” (Adair and

Harvey 321). Hamilton was, however, not a member of any congregation, further supporting the notion that he was an opportunist who first and foremost sought a federation of American states, what Adair and Harvey call “opportunistic religiosity.” Only when he was on his deathbed in

1804, mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr (before he had successfully created his coalition), did Hamilton try to take communion. Before that time, he had tried and succeeded to harness the power of God to shine a positive light on the Federalist Party, the party of social order, union, and stability, especially in the face of the unsettling French Revolution (Adair and

Harvey 310; 316). If not the first Christian statesman, Hamilton regardless began the trend of association between religion and political conservatism that, as Reichley states, has “many progeny in American political history.”

Christian Alliances in with the Democrats, Whigs, and Republicans

From here the story becomes a clearly different animal from the experience in Great

Britain. Across the Atlantic, the Church of England had just reached national supremacy, 44 creating a system by which the Protestant church was supported by the British government and was taught in British schools. It became in the interest of the beneficiaries of established religion

– the clergy and aristocracy – to support the party of order (the Tories) in order to maintain their elite status. In the United States, social order was not synonymous with religious order. Indeed, there was no religious order, at least as far federal or state governments were concerned. Primary motivation for political-religious party alliances did not include preservation of the denomination in power, but rather the unification of ideals stressed by holders of each faith with those political platforms that most closely adhered to them. Politicians had no choice but to work to appeal to the Christian sentiments of their constituencies, which was made somewhat easier on the state level due to relative homogeneity in state-by-state religious demographics (Reichley 171).

The liberal American alliance between evangelical Christians and an increasingly prolific and secular middle class saw the Democratic-Republicans remain in power after Thomas

Jefferson’s eight years for five more terms. The middle class’ economic liberalism and the relative social liberalism of the evangelicals melded well together at this time, and naturally led them to support Jefferson’s early version of laissez-faire government. In particular, it was the evangelical support of the Republicans, which was actively wooed by that party, which allowed it to keep its political majority (Reichly 181). This case exemplifies perfectly the tendency of

Americans to fall in line with political organizations that reflected their religious beliefs.

Congregationalist, Episcopalian, and Presbyterian sought to maintain as much of the Puritan origins of the United States as possible and supported the Federalist party of order, while non-

Puritan evangelicals wanted to be left alone, siding with the party of relatively small government.

The next realignment of religious and political affiliation came with the creation of

Democrats. At the beginning of John Adams’ presidential term in 1797, the Democratic- 45

Republican Party split into two factions. Adams’ more conservative National Republicans favored a strong central government and high tariffs. Andrew Jackson, who had won the popular vote and a plurality in the general election only to be infuriated when Congress chose Adams over him, rallied his followers to form the Democratic Party (Lopore). Claiming to be the candidate of equality and liberty, Jackson oozed a populist message (Reichley 182). Jackson’s eight years of presidency were highly controversial – he had a distinct habit of filling his cabinet only with those most loyal to him and effectively employed newspaper polling to boost his popularity (Morse 155; 157). More importantly for our purposes however, Jackson attracted a considerable cross-section of Christian interests to his ranks. Large amounts of European immigrants, especially Irish and German, had begun to land in the east and move westward. Poor immigrants such as German Lutherans and Reformed Protestants, as well as while the Irish and other Catholics, were swayed by populist appeal and largely became Jacksonian Democrats

(Reichley 183). Jackson, being an evangelical himself, probably attracted these types with his class message as well as his religious leanings, however there is not much evidence that Jackson used a message which spoke to specific Christian doctrines in order to gain his appeal (Remini

74).

On the other hand, British Protestants and German pietists, who favored more stern religious views and social conservatism, tended to align with the party of order, which was at first Adams’ National Republican Party but soon became the re-forged American Whig Party

(Congressional Digest 2). As Reichley notes, however, immigrant political affiliation during this time often had more to do with matching the concerns of social and economic minorities to a religious cause than with religious doctrine itself. Jackson’s message of equality appealed to the concerns of many economic, social, and religious minorities (many of which overlapped, like 46 poor Catholic immigrants), but also threatened some who felt that the balance of power was being shifted into a “mass party” system, which they were not used to (Maizlish 27). The Whig party was a reaction to this power shift, and sought to decentralize influence on the political system (Maizlish 30). The old, rich, colonial north tended to display conservative, pro-tax and pro-federal government “Whiggish” tendencies, while the rural west and south, where early immigrants usually settled, were more likely to show favor towards the Jacksonian Democrats

(Reichley 182).

While this evidence shows us that this point in American history saw no correlation between general religiosity and conservatism – as both political parties held the majority of support from a share of religious factions – links between conservative politics and conservative religion were beginning to grow stronger. After 1830 when floods of Irish Catholic immigrants began to land on Ellis Island, deep-rooted Protestant prejudices began to resurface. The reaction was catalyzed by a fear of outsiders as well as the threat that low-wage Catholic workers posed to naturalized Protestant laborers (Reichley 185). More and more, conservative, nationalist, old

Protestant American guard sided with the order of the Whig party. Whigs actively wooed the

Protestants as well, through a nativist (nationalist) appeal and by backing reforms espoused by evangelicals. The Whig Party adhered to its overriding desire for social stability and national harmony (Maizlish 28), which matched perfectly with religiosity that descended from Puritan sentiment. Reichley notes that “groups that resisted applying [conservative] religious values directly to politics showed less tendency to shift to the Whigs” in the 1830s and 1840s (Reichley

187).

47

The Alignment of Religion and Conservative Politics

The musical chairs of alignments between the political parties of the first half of the 19th century set the stage for the formation of a number of significant coalitions in the American political system. By the 1840s religion in America was already being treated as a much different force than it was in Great Britain. No denomination carried with it any legal legitimacy, which meant interests had to use participation to fight for exposure. The Second Great Awakening, which ended around 1840, had produced a culture of social activism in the name of Christianity

(Corbett and Corbett 91), the waves of which would levitate religious influence into politics in a number of key ways. In the debates that accompanied the Abolition Movement, religious voices were critical, and progress would have “seriously slowed down” without church-going activists

(Dunn 31). Similarly, the push for prohibition at the finale of the Temperance Movement was of both conservative and liberal Protestant doing (Corbett and Corbett 99). After the Civil War and through the New Deal, the Social Gospel movement flourished, which characterized the significant social responsibility which many more liberal Christians took upon themselves.

Social gospel discourse in its later years also created stark divisions between conservative religious groups (Congregationalist, Episcopalians, and evangelicals) and liberal to moderate interests (the majority of Protestants, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians) (Corbett and

Corbett 92, 103; Hulsether 82). These episodes would cement religious activism into American culture, as Christian interests evolved into coalitions of interest groups who found it increasingly easy to push their agendas in the political scene in the absence of any established religion to marginalize particular voices.

48

Abolition

The push for individual liberty, arguably the most fundamental concept under which

America was founded, became a push for equality and social reform in the years leading up to the Civil War in 1861. Recall the revolutionary alliance between pietists and deists – two denominations squarely placed on opposite sides of the spectrum yet unified in their drive for personal freedom. Now in the 1840s and 50s, transcendental and Unitarian doctrines allied with conservative Protestant interests in the abolition movement (Corbett and Corbett 97; Dunn 29-

30). Of course, the language used by the two groups was significantly different. Conservatives placed enormous worth in the “sanctification or perfection of man” while liberal theologians valued the divine within man as well as “eliminating restrictions on man’s freedom” (Dunn 30).

Nevertheless, Christian activism was influential in the abolition movement and built upon the idea that “governmental power [could be used as] as tool for theological action” (Dunn 31). This activism is important in our story because we see for the last time an alliance between opposite sides of the religious spectrum (minus the Catholics, but they take their orders from Rome which is detached from American politics and society) that have an interest in the same outcome, pro- liberty outcome. The religious liberals and social liberals would, however, become severely split later when national debate turned from individual liberty to social welfare.

It seems appropriate here to highlight some key documents and correspondences which are often cited in the tense yet vital alliance between Christian sects in the years prior to the Civil

War. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States published a statement which, under no uncertain terms, stated its position on the concept of slavery.

Exemplifying denominations of Puritan Protestantism, Protestant voices like Charles Finney, who became the President of Oberlin College following another of his abolitionist 49 contemporaries Asa Mahan, and William Lloyd Garrison threw their weight beside the influential document:

We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the human race by another, as

a gross violation of the most precious and sacred rights of human nature as utterly

inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to love our neighbor as

ourselves and as totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the Gospel

of Christ, which enjoin that, “all things whatsoever ya would that men should do

to you, do ye even so to them (“Extracts” 28).

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an iconic transcendentalist and opposite in many ways from the

Protestant establishment, similar to the relationship that deists had to pietsts, had this to say:

Once man was all; now he is an appendage, a nuisance. And because the

indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers

this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one of two person, and

denied to all the rest, and denied with furry (Emerson 128).

Finney’s predecessor at Oberlin College, Asa Mahan, was a Christian “perfectionist” of rather unique persuasion. His argued that all men are indentured servants to God, so no man can hold another man in his service as it betrays the absolute holiness of God’s will:

Such is Christian Perfection. It is the consecration of our whole being to Christ,

and the perpetual employment of all our powers in his service. It is the perfect

assimilation of our entire character to that of Christ, having at all times, and under

all circumstances, the “same mind that was also in Christ Jesus” (Mahan 71). 50

All of these iterate how conservative and liberal extremes of Protestantism were both influential in the move to end slavery, but as stated above it would be the last time these two extremes would find common ground on such an important issue.

The Catholic Church, not surprisingly given its historical knack for social conservatism but worth mentioning because of its different take in applying Christianity to the issue of slavery, justified slavery with Biblical evidence. Charleston, North Carolina Bishop John England argued his position thusly:

In the New Testament we find instances of pious and good men having slaves,

and in no case do we find the Saviour imputing it to them as a crime, or requiring

their servants’ emancipation. In chap. Viii of St. Matthew, we read of a centurion,

who addressing the Lord Jesus, said, v. 9, “For I also am a man under authority

having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, go, and he goeth; and another

come, and he cometh: and to my servant, do this and he doeth” (Letters, 34)

I present the Catholic interpretation here to show that justification existed whereby conservative

American Protestants could have supported slavery on religious grounds. The fact that they did not illustrates perfectly the alliance between conservative and liberal sects of Protestantism and how important it is to our story. The way conservatives and liberals aligned pre-20th century opposite from what we would expect looking back on the situation from a contemporary standpoint.

The Abolition Movement was the last of its kind in the realm of religious involvement in politics. It was the last public policy issue that saw Christian teamwork over a wide range of denominations (Dunn 31) though many churches including the Presbyterian, Baptist and

Methodist establishments all experienced great cleavages in their ranks due to the ambiguity with 51 which slavery is addressed in the Bible (Corbett and Corbett 96). Christian interests of all creeds began to transform from theological institutions to interest groups keenly interested in influencing public policy, eager to realize in their country what they believed was prescribed by

God. However, after this point these groups are seen to begin disagreeing on key issues, which then leads to heavier and competitive Christian representation in government. Initially as we will see, the leftist Christian push for social reform paved the way for bigger government that was to be more involved in the daily lives of American citizens while legitimizing this sort of initiative in future political party platforms (Dunn 31-2). While religious activism on the left in clearly a trend inverse to what this paper argues, we will see how the tide turns with the schism that forms between the political left and the evangelicals. Nevertheless, the Christian religion was now a force to be reckoned with in American politics.

The Social Gospel Movement

The social gospel movement is an early modern episode which can exemplify the religious and political activism that has become associated with Christianity in America, and it was against this progressive religious temperament, which spanned into the 1930s before losing much of its influence, that the conservative and Christian right eventually reacted intensely

(Corbett and Corbett 92, Hulsether 151). As Hulsether explains, “the social gospel was an activist version of liberal Protestantism – the religious wing of a wider movement for Progressive reform and the politicized wing of Protestants whose theology was moving in…modernist directions” (Hulsether 82). Social gospelers were, to put it visually, the middle portion of a Venn diagram, the two contributing circles being religious conscientiousness and political participation. Participants in the movement expanded their call for reform into social and 52 economic injustices of the newly-industrialized United States, and often favored progressive outcomes over religious status quos.

A man credited for defining much of what the social gospel movement became was pastor and professor Walter Rauschenbusch. While Rauschenbusch was Baptist, social gospelers also emanated in large numbers from Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Methodist congregations as well (Hulsether 84). At the center of his argument, and of the arguments of the core of the social gospel movement, was that “institutional Christianity had forgotten the vital communal message of Christ, that it had given up social justice in favor of systematized individual salvation, and that the ills of industrial society only magnified the spiritual failings of Christian America” (Bowman

95). The social gospel movement was both a response of Protestantism to American industrial society and an application of liberal political theory to a progressive Christian values (Bowman

96; Dunn 74). The name social gospel is significant, as during and beyond the 1930s it evolved into an ever-more liberal sociological (as opposed to liberal theological) movement. However, it always retained its roots to the evangelical and pietistic Protestantism which first allied with the same liberal, individualistic voices in the founding of the country.

Rauschenbusch was himself evangelical in doctrine. However, sociologists since his time have found it easy to indicate that the social gospel message was “juryrigged” from the theological standards in the 19th century to fit a problem that was more grey than black and white. Though the language in his defining work, Christianity and the Social Crisis, attempted to channel both religious piety and social responsibility, it undertook the difficult task of reconciling two simultaneous crises: the social injustices that were occurring in burgeoning

American cities and a Protestant Church attempting to adapt to a radically new backdrop (Strain

529). The social gospelers had the difficult task of “modernizing” into a society with starker 53 inequalities and a clear gap between the rich and poor, frequently defined by race or nationality.

This new society was also largely materialized. The American population wanted tangible gains over spiritual enlightenment. Rauschenbusch made innumerable calls for inward-looking contemplation and a redefining of individual faith. “It is not this thing or that thing that our nation needs, but a new mind and heart” (Rauschenbusch 481), he pleaded in his 1912 work

Christianizing the Social Order. However, theology and the emerging modern American culture proved more and more difficult to reconcile than people like Rauschenbusch had originally perceived.

The union of social liberals and Christian pietists saw its most vehement push in the social gospel era. But as it progressed, gospelers did indeed tend to favor a more liberal, sociological tact over theology, and many were in fact becoming moderate socialists (Hulsether

83). Gospelers who remained true to the movement’s original call – that for reinvigorating the communal Christian spirit into the public lives of Americans – saw their alliance with secular liberals tilt away from religious ties (Sweeney 84). This unfolding division foreshadows the split between evangelical Christianity from Progressivism and its alignment with conservative politics which Marsden calls the rise of “new evangelicalism” (Marsden 62). After Rauschenbusch’s death in 1918, it took no longer than two decades for most of the theological language to be siphoned out of the gospelers’ rhetoric (Strain 526), filtering evangelicals away from their ranks.

In the (often internal) battle between socially liberal cause for reform and theological justification for the same, secular ideals began to separate for good. Before what is considered to be the end of the social gospel movement in the 1930s, however it made one final statement as to the power and potential success of the Christian lobby in American government: the temperance movement. 54

Temperance, Prohibition, and the New Deal

In 1912, the Progressive Party met for its first party convention. The theme song chosen for the occasion was Sabine Baring-Gould’s “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Theodore Roosevelt, the party’s nominee for President of the United Sates, appealed greatly to social gospelers the mostly middle-class proponents of “social Christianity” (Corbett and Corbett 98). Among the

Progressive Party’s plethora of proposed reforms, which ranged from direct primaries to eight hour work days to women’s suffrage, was “either strict regulation of the liquor traffic or its outright prohibition” (Hudson and Corrigan 306). Though the Progressives split the Republican vote, allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to be elected as president, many Progressive reforms powered forward. As the temperance movement became stronger, more voices were calling for complete prohibition. Though there were some exceptions, Protestants and evangelicals solidly backed the move, and organized interest groups to make a stand in Washington (Kerr 38).

One of these groups was the American Anti-Saloon League, a single-issue interest group founded in 1895, which has been called “virtually a branch of the Methodist and Baptists churches” (Dabney 35). The Anti-Saloon League is looked back on as one of the first times a group of like-minded common citizens organized around a single cause (Kerr 37). The League was not, by any stretch, a coalition of people concerned about general societal ills. It existed for one purpose: the complete prohibition of alcohol. It was the first to push for an Amendment to the Constitution to such an effect, and in 1920 celebrated with the passage of the 18th

Amendment (Kerr 38). In the 1920s it appeared as if this group, assembled for just one cause, was the most powerful force in American politics with the exception of the Progressive,

Republican, and Democratic parties themselves. 55

Pivotally, the organizational uniqueness of the League originated from necessity – at the close of the 19th century the temperance movement was in total disarray. Leaders could not agree on the methods and public policy with which to achieve their goals (Kerr 40). Degrees of opinion ran from crusading for the total unlawfulness of making, selling, or drinking alcohol to merely persuading companions of the harm it induces. Some wanted to steer clear of political action; other saw it as the only way. In response, the League was organized in a nearly unilateral fashion. Its leadership was not elected, it was selected, and participants who joined were made aware of exactly the organization it was – and were not given the opportunity to change it (Kerr

48). It was able to speak to Congressional representatives with an unwavering, uniform message.

A new form of political organization was born, and its eventual success modeled the way for more ideology-based interest groups to follow.

A few years after the passage of the 18th Amendment, proliferation of undergrounds speakeasies and crime turned Prohibition into one of the most unpopular laws in American history, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act in 1933 permitting the sale of 3.2 beer, and nine months later saw the ratification of the 21st Amendment, repealing the 18th

Amendment, on December 5th. Also on Roosevelt’s agenda was what became the New Deal – a program whose implications for social justice and individual liberty would split liberal and conservative Christian denominations completely. With its assault on individual liberties that even the programs architect, Rexford Tugwell, admitted to, it shook apart long-standing political alliances beyond the religious arena (Dunn 49). Still, the New Deal era ended the liberal- evangelical alliance which had stood, albeit more strongly at times, for 150 years.

Key to this change was a new way in which liberal theology came to interpret the Bible.

As Dunn explains, Evangelicals declare that the Bible is “the Word of God.” It is a literal and 56 uninterrupted account of God’s will and should be obeyed as such. In order to accommodate more socially liberal beliefs in support of New Deal legislation, liberal Christian denominations, most notable Presbyterians and Methodists, came to state that “the Bible contains [italics are mine] the Word of God” (Dunn 47). As it appeared to them, the Bible contains man-made errors, old-fashioned interpretations that cannot possibly be adapted to modern times, and that it must be reframed in light of different circumstances.

This was only half the division, and the following half is perhaps the most important and has the farthest-reaching implications. The liberal interpretation of the Bible went hand in hand with a new interpretation of the American Constitution; an interpretation necessary for the success of New Deal legislation. The late 1930s and early 1940s saw the reevaluation of a number of vital provisions in the Constitution. Dunn outlines, and I agree, on the three most important:

In 1936, the Supreme Court declared that the “general welfare” clause of Article

I, Section 8, permitted Congress to appropriate funds for just about any purpose it

chose…In 1937, “interstate commerce” (Article I, Section 8), was defined as

anything that substantially affected the flow of interstate business, whether or not

it actually crossed state lines…In 1942, the Court held that the national

government could regulate a product even if the producer did not intend to sell it,

because the product could still effect interstate commerce (Dunn 49-50).

Liberal purposes for the Bible and liberal purposes for the government now synced. Liberal ideology held that just as the Bible should be actively applied to changing social conditions, the democratic state should apply political power to the ends of social welfare and equality while enlarging the federal government. 57

Evangelical religious views within the Social Gospel movement stoically opposed such a vision. These Christians respected the individual liberty given to man in the Bible meant to allow them to become closer to God. The state should not interfere with a person’s individual liberties as they are inherently what make us human. In the same vein, conservative political ideology rejected big government, and instead advocated a government similar to that envisioned by those who signed the Constitution. This is constitutional government at its heart, they argued – a federal government with a limited role. In this way, conservative politics and the literal interpretation of the Bible became wedded in the New Deal era, and would stay that way (Dunn

51-52).

Results of Events through the New Deal

American Christianity never had the chance to settle down into a publicly authoritative, establishment-style role and, unlike the Church of England, thus avoided the target on its back.

The institutionally secular government continued to define and redefine its role through the decades, and religious groups were often the most vehement about where its priorities should lie.

As a new country with a relatively loose set of rules, differing sets of morals and doctrines were free, from the point of the country’s founding, to mold the roles of government and civil participation. This backdrop, as we have seen, defined the involvement of special and specific interests in a country founded on the cornerstones of Puritan Christian theology.

While Christian participation in government was begot from the legal separation of the two entities, it was the persistent liberal movements for the intervention of the state (acting in part on behalf of religious interests) that led to the alignment of literal translators of the Bible with political conservatives. From the very act of declaring American independence to the Civil 58

War to Prohibition to the New Deal, liberal and conservative religious voices grappled with the application of their faith to the malleable political and social climate, but were always and ubiquitously present in the daily life of the average American. Unfortunately for these biblical adherents, the holy scriptures proved difficult to adapt to the pressure that came in the industrialized era, and in the United States there was no single religious establishment reassuring the population that, “no really, God wanted there to be an active state role in individual liberties, trust us.” The American people had to figure it out for themselves.

The New Deal pitted two camps of Christians, who until now had found enough common ground to stay unified on important issues such as slavery and temperance, against each other.

The peitists (or evangelicals) desired a federal government who adhered strictly to the

Constitution in its call for a small role of the state. Their view on politics was derived at the core from the evangelical interpretation of the Bible – one that is both literal and stresses personal liberty. Progressive Christians had had enough of what they saw as rampant moral injustices brought on by the modern era, and their passion for equity translated into their support for a more secular government which focused on the fair distribution of wealth and resources. The Christian interest now completely divided, hardcore believers sided more and more with the Republican party of small government, choosing a demand for small government over a preference for social justice (Sweeney 82). The switch primed the American religious landscape for a change from mainline Protestantism to a surge in evangelicalism, which gradually increased through the rest of the 20th and into the 21st centuries (Hulsether 153; Moore 318; Domke). From the end of

WWII onward, the increasingly large religious right thrived on mobilization for conservative politics, taking off in earnest during the 1970s and reaching a pinnacle at the presidency of

Ronald Reagan (Schulman). 59

But by 1950, the lines had been drawn. Conservative, traditional Christian interpreters, tired of a government that was getting bigger and more powerful, felt threatened. Our Founders, after all, constructed a nation where the personal lives of God’s faithful would not be hindered;

American citizens would be at liberty to spread their faith, spread God’s Word, and live decent, moral, Christian lives. Politically conservative advocates argued that the constitution should be interpreted as the traditional Christians did the Bible – by the letter. The federal government should let the states and their inhabitants be, with minimal interference. The beginning of WWII marked the peak of liberal power. By the 1970s, the liberal demographic had dropped off considerably, and conservative politics would make a tremendous comeback in much of the lead up to the new millennium (Hulsether 153). Politics and religion in the United States, it seems, grew hand in hand from the moment of the nation’s inception, and now we see the product of a consistently active political wing of American Christian religion realigned with the political conservatives in the Republican party, and a host of issues for which to crusade and upon which to maintain their powerful voice would manifest in the coming decades. These issues would provide the Christian Right with fuel for their unity until present day.

1960s and Beyond

As alluded to in the beginning of this paper, scores of authors have tackled various aspects of the post-WWII ascension of the Christian Right in the United States. While this paper has attempted to show why these authors now associate religiosity with conservatism, it has not even begun to dive into to fascinating political and social processes that caused the sudden rise in

American Christian political power in the latter half of the 20th century. Put another way, we have seen the marriage between Christianity and the political Right, but have not explained why 60 modern American conservative politics and in fact so severely swayed by this constituency. On the British side, there is some literature on a resurgence of evangelicalism, but looking for authors writing on the prominence of religious rhetoric and doctrine in British politics is all but futile (as, frankly, there isn’t any). Fortunately, for myself and those curious about these phenomena, there are places to turn to for help in finding out more about the American Christian

Right and the British evangelicals – both a product of the processes this essay explains. What follows is a small sampling of what I have found.

In For a ‘Christian America’: A History of the Religious Right, Ruth Murray Brown pinpoints what she believes is the first time in the post WWII era when politics rattled enough reaction out religious republicans to create a movement. The Equal Rights Act of 1972, she writes, faced little opposition in the state ratification process until it came up against Women for

Responsible Legislation, a group lead by an Episcopalian Republican but populated mostly by

Christian fundamentalists, which had had time to organize resistance in Oklahoma (Brown, R.M.

31). The group also used the concerns of conservative Christians, who feared that women would be able to be ordained, as a call to action (Brown, R.M. 42). The interest group’s success spawned more like it around the country.

Brown then dissects a number of American occurrences, people, and trends that she sees as having produced today’s Religious Right. She goes into the White House Conference on

Families, a product of Jimmy Carter’s campaign in a promise to Catholics for such a program;

Jerry Falwell and the rise of the Baptists and the Moral Majority; and Pat Robertson and the

Christian Coalition, as catalysts in uniting the broad spectrum of conservative Christians under one banner (Brown, R.M. 142; 157; 184). Additionally, in a section which plays into the 61 hypothesis of my paper, Brown uses the grassroots response to Church and State issues as another anchor in the Christian-Republican port. She writes:

For many conservative Christians, the courts became the enemy of Christianity

when they began interpreting the First Amendment as forbidding religious

symbols on government property or verbal expressions of religion by government

officials or tax-supported teachers (Brown, R.M. 249).

The American Christian interest, not only gathered into congruent organizations by charismatic leaders, had burning issues with government that served to solidify their efforts further.

A variety of authors, such as Randall Balmer and D.G. Hart, hypothesize that, more specifically than Christians, evangelicals were really the ones who were able to kick-start the religious interest from merely engaged in the 1950s to an extreme force in the 1970s and beyond.

“Evangelicals,” Balmer writes, “with their presses, their denominations, and their benevolent societies,” already possessed the primary utilities that Alexis de Tocqueville targeted as the “two chief weapons which parties use in order to ensure success” (press and associations) (Balmer

57). Hart points to the 1980 presidential election between Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and third party candidate John Anderson, who all claimed to be born again Christians, as the first time evangelicals were wooed to the point of turning an election (Hart, 144). In their views, the

Religious Right can be narrowed down to the evangelical right, with more moderate to lesser conservative Christian interests following suit and adding to the evangelical outcry.

Other volumes attempt to cover the current politics of the Christian Right, and explain how those politics emanate from the history I have just covered. In The New Religious Right:

Piety, Patriotism, and Politics by Walter H. Capps, the author makes an important distinction that

I would like to reiterate here. While far right Christian conservatives certainly affect American 62 policy in a variety of ways, Capps asserts that “democracy…and religious fundamentalism have never been good candidates for partnership” (Capps 213). That is to say, a fundamentalist

Christian government would not be compatible with a democratic political structure. Capps lays out a number of reasons for this, the most obvious and important being that fundamental

Christianity divides people into two camps: the “saved” and the “lost.” This religious stratification would be impossible to reconcile (Capps 213). He goes on to say that the vast majority of Christian Right really has no desire to change the structure of government, but rather to sway its positions. That said, I would posit that at a certain point, those efforts would indeed take the effect of muddying the waters between Church and State beyond easy repair.

Among others who explain present day Christian conservative trends and policies, and to varying degrees explain them by means of historical analysis, is Sara Diamond with Not by

Politics Alone: The Enduring Influence of the Christian Right and Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right. While Capps takes a more moderate stance on the goals of the movement,

Diamond is very blunt in saying

The Religious Right is by no means monolithic, but the competing and conflicting

elements within the movement appear to be united in a single overall effort: to

take eventual control over the political and social institutions in the United States

and – by extension – the rest of the world (Diamond, 45).

Notice that Diamond, like Capps, does not argue that any elements wants to change political structure, but it seems that she believes the organizers would want anything but. Diamond attributes the movement’s goals to a deep-seeded conspiracy-oriented mindset, fostered by the anti-communist campaigns in the 1950s (Diamond, 47). Like the authors before, Diamond also alludes to civil rights movements at the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s as the time when the 63

Religious Right was able to mobilize for the first time into a degree of the political force we see today (Diamond 48).

In the direction of literature pertaining to Great Britain, it is much sparser. There is, as mentioned before, a fair amount covering evangelicalism there, but hardly a mention of its (non- existent) political organization. In an understandably larger volume, Evangelicalism in Modern

Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s by D.W. Bebbington, the author sets aside a good helping of the book to cover evangelical resurgence in the 20th century. There are immediate differences with the American case, however. Most importantly, Bebbington describes a considerable fluctuation of opinions within the resurgence. Four distinct religious codes occupy what is here called the “range of evangelical opinion”: liberals, who welcome modernity but into their Anglican Christian tradition; centrists, who tried to reconcile the liberal and conservative schools (this sounds the most like what the Religious Right in the United States has done); moderate conservatism, a school whose members have come to refer to themselves as “definite” evangelicals; and fundamentalists (Bebbington, 251-252). There is no unified movement, no congruence on social and political goals. In addition, Bebbington describes no serious political pressure by these groups on any sort of British national public policy.

Lastly, and very interestingly, J. Christopher Soper has written a book entitled

Evangelical Christianity in the United States and Great Britain: Religious Beliefs, Political

Choices. He details in it, among other things, a section entitled “The Political Mobilization of

Evangelicals,” which struck me as odd considering that I had not read about any political mobilization of evangelicals in the U.K. to this point. Not surprisingly, the section covers mostly

American experiences. Again, the author points to a time period we have heard before: 64

Evangelicals became acutely aware of the distance between their beliefs and

social practice during the 1960s and 1970s as divorce rates climbed,

homosexuality was more openly expressed, prayer and bible reading were

removed from the public schools, birth control and abortion became more widely

available, and sexual practices changed dramatically (Soper 105).

But, in addition, Soper does use some statistics with which he shows that church membership in selected U.K. denominations have all fallen since 1960 except for three new congregations:

House Churches, Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, and Assemblies of God.

These groups, though only founded within the last 20 years, have seen membership increases

(Soper 99). Soper uses this to show us that evangelicalism in the U.K. is on the rise, which is consistent with other existing literature, but again he does not show that these groups have a significant impact on politics.

Conclusion

The establishment of an ecclesiastical authority seems to have had everything to do with the dismantling of political Christian authority in the U.K., and everything to do with its strength in the U.S. The British government, in wrestling with the pitfalls of corroborating social policy with Christian interests over the centuries, succeeded only in distancing the majority of its own population with the establishment that it was trying to perpetuate. Though religion was still very much a part of private life in 20th century Britain, it became secondary to middle-class interests, confounded by the gray areas that had developed between church dogma and popular interest. In the United States, the Christian religion was the public interest for much of the country’s history.

A wide range of diverse opinions came to exist in the Christian sphere, but as there was no set of 65 beliefs officially supported by government, interest groups were free to form in order to exercise influence from these varying creeds in the political arena. These interest groups became efficient at unifying and magnifying their message, and the power of the Christian influence was incubated in the early 20th century. By the time leaders of the Religious Right consolidated these interests with their charisma and unique message, the foundation was already in place.

Many Americans see the ability of diverse interests to speak directly to Washington in the forms of special interests or political action committees as uniquely American. This is highly debatable. However, this case shows how the institutionalized disenfranchisement of a segment

(and in this instance a very large one) of the population can lead to its mobilization. American

Christian interests needed to mobilize, as they perceived their sacred country as threatened by opinions which did not mesh with its founding beliefs. Citizens in the U.K. had no reason to fear this way, because their government had the authority to define outright what religious codes it abided by. The religious order in the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great

Britain and Northern Ireland was the product of a fundamental difference in government – a top- down imposition of Christian authority versus encouragement of bottom-up public action. 66

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