The Transcendence of Politics: Evangelical Political Theory in the Early American Republic

“THE BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT IS ALREADY ANTICIPATED:” EVANGELICAL POLITICAL THEORY IN THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLICIntroductionIn his seminal book, America’s God, Mark Noll suggests that eighteenth-century evangelicals “effortlessly conjoined” republican, liberal, and theisic common sense accounts into a uniquely American public ideology.1 The speed with which these intellectual streams converged in the period preceding the Revolutionary War is remarkable given the long-standing Protestant antipathy towards republicanism and liberalism. In Noll’s account, this rapid “confluence” towards a shared parlance was aided by pressing circumstances and the multivalency of critical concepts such as liberty, virtue, and the public good.2 In an earlier essay, Noll suggests that this “most unusual conjunction” is now “thoroughly understood.”3This essay argues that a largely unnoticed political theory enabled early-republic evangelicals to theoretically synthesize the key concepts of its rivals. In other words, Noll’s confluence is not merely a rhetorical conjunction but an integrated account of public life erected 1Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). The “effortlessly conjoined” expression is on page 212.2See also Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 12, Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 118 and Barry Alan Shain, The Myth of American Individualism: The Protestant Origins of American Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 41-42.3Mark A. Noll, “The American Revolution and Protestant Evangelicalism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23:3 (Winter 1993): 617.1 on wholy new premises. This implicit account furnished evangelicals with a surprisingly flexible theory of public life. And because it absorbed the vocabulary and conceptual material of its rivals, it is difficult to detect, let alone understand. Two aspects of this model commended themselves to evangelicals. First, it is a political theory that does not depend on governmental institutions. Only the moral-economic political theory can account for the anti-governmental pessimism of early nineteenth century evangelicals since all of the other extant theories—liberal, republican, or reformed-Puritan—depend on governmental institutions to promote the public good. The radical grumblings of evangelicals in the period after the election of Thomas Jefferson means that their political theory cannot be a simple amalgam of existing theories.Second, evangelical political theory countenances an unprecedented variety of publically- relevant agencies. Whereas most political theories specify a closed set of political actors to the exclusion of others, the evangelical account is remarkably open to new agencies, including, for instance, individuals, voluntary societies, and voluntary churches. And since moral-economic theories are putatively empirical, there can be no necessary relations between any agency and the good. These connections must be confirmed in experience. This rejection of all a priori connections between institutions and the good made evangelical political theorizing particularly responsive to historical precedents as well as changing institutional and moral conditions.This essay will describe the genesis of moral-economic accounts and their emergence as political theories in American evangelicalism. It will also explore the pessimistic ruminations of evangelicals in the period after 1800 insofar as they are relevant to the underlying moral- economic model. In conclusion, it will suggest that several of the enduring polarities within evangelical public culture are expressions of the flexibility of this theory.2 Civil Society and the Eclipse of GovernmentPrior to the Enlightenment, western political theorists were chiefly charged with providing institutional means for checking “those wretched Principles, of Pride and Contradiction, Disorder and Confusion, which the first Rebellion hath unhappily brought into the hearts of men.”4 In this view, viable governments must possess a “credible threat system.”5 Writing in the early fifth century, Augustine summarized what was to become the consensual view in Europe for a millennium. Surely it is not without purpose that we have the institution of the power of kings, the death penalty of the judge, the barbed hooks of the executioner, the weapons of the soldier, the right of punishment of the overlord, even the severity of the good father. All those things have their methods, their causes, their reasons, their practical benefits. While these are feared, the wicked are kept within bounds and the good live more peacefully among the wicked.64Gurdon Saltonstall [1666-1724], minister from New London and future Governor of Connecticut, re-affirmed the classic theory of civil government. This sentence from his election- day sermon at Hartford in 1697 is cited in Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 5.5This phrase is borrowed from Kenneth E. Boulding, “Economic Theory of Natural Liberty," s.v.Dictionary of the History of Ideas, 4 vols, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973), 2:61.6Augustine [354-430], Letter 153, trans. Sister W. Parsons, Fathers of the Church (New York, 1953), Chapter 16. Reprinted in Oliver O'Donovan and Joan Lockwood O'Donovan, eds. From Irenaeus to Grotius: A Sourcebook in Christian Political Thought 100-1625 (Grand Rapids: 3 In keeping with this tradition and in response to the growing unrest in seventeenth-century England, Thomas Hobbes assigned absolute sovereignty to the national government by releasing it from all moral, feudal, or legal encumbrances. Since there is no reason or logos implicit in nature by which the state can be ordered, Hobbes projected a commonwealth wherein the sovereign’s unrivaled will would guarantee stability. Only the absolute freedom of the sovereign could save humanity from its destructive tendencies.7 For Hobbes, the political order could only be maintained if the sovereign’s will penetrated every aspect of the world. Imposed sovereign will is the only adequate ordering principle in Hobbes’s post-feudal commonwealth.John Locke’s important political writings rejected the severe authoritarianism of Hobbes. Locke argued that because civil society is prior to and independent of institutionalized authority it can more naturally achieve an integrated harmony of interests. Locke’s influential arguments broke with the consensual view of western political philosophy. For Locke, political power is a primordial characteristic of individuals; it is only derivatively a feature of governments. Although the institutional expressions of this power can be delegated to civil society and subsequently to a particular government, it can never be alienated from its originating individuals nor identified with governmental prerogative. Even though he never seriously doubted that civil society would need a governmental arm to assist it in protecting the property of its citizens, Locke leaves open the tantalizing possibility that civil society could achieve these goals by other, that is, non-governmental, means.Locke’s account of the emergence of governmental institutions begins with persons in the state of nature. This pre-political state is a condition of relative equality, freedom, and Eerdmans, 1999), 125-26.7John H. Hallowell and Jene M. Porter, Political Philosophy: The Search for Humanity and Order (Scarborough: Prentice-Hall Canada, 1997), 334.4 independence.8 In this primordial state “men confront each other . . . without any intrinsic authority over each other and without the right to restrict the . . . behaviour of others.”9 Everyone in these circumstances possesses the executive and juridical power of the entire law of nature (self-preservation, freedom, non-subjection). However, even in this state of relative happiness, persons often misjudge violations of these laws and seek revenge or show excessive leniency. These missteps lead to various instabilities which motivate individuals to search for conditions under which peace and property preservation can be more durably achieved.In Locke’s view, the rational response to these precarious conditions is for individuals to mutually consent to incorporate a “civil society” in order to assure that they will be “comfortable, safe, and peaceable.”10 A majority-will selection of particular governmental institutions follows this incorporation; as such, the government is subject to civil society’s original mandate to preserve the property of its several members. With this bold stroke, Locke forecloses the possibility of authoritarian government since it is necessarily subservient to the expressed will of civil society and ultimately, the security and happiness of its members. The priority of civil society insures that even wholesale changes in governmental form, which were common in the seventeenth century, will not destabilize it.Locke tellingly suggests that there are circumstances in which governmental institutions will not need to supplement the informal processes of civil society. He argues, for instance, that amiable social relations are often sustained between independent groups and, assuming that there8John Locke [1632-1704], The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Thomas P. Peardon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1952), 54.9John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the 'Two Treatises of Government' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 106-07.10Locke, The Second Treatise, 54.5 is no threat to property, there is no reason to believe that a governmental apparatus will be needed to keep the peace between them. He concurs with Josephus Acosta, a Spanish Jesuit missionary to Peru, who claimed that many central and south American groups live in troops and have “no certain kings, but as occasion is offered, in peace or war, they choose their captains as they please.” In these cases, governmental institutions are invoked only as the occasion warrants; they are not permanent fixtures. If the classic assumption of western political theory were true, namely, that authoritarian government is essential for social and political order, how can it be that in “many parts of America there was no government at all?”11Locke’s conception of civil society as an independent, pre-political, and purposive body demolishes authoritarian theories of government. In his account, government is reduced to an agency of social will. Even more radically, the question whether or not civil society can operate without government is fatefully broached. If the ends typically assigned to repressive government can be achieved through the relatively benign operations of civil society, political institutions are threatened. In Locke’s own prophetic words, nothing is “necessary to any [civil] society that is not necessary to the ends for which it is made.”12 That is, if government does not make a necessary contribution to the purposes of civil society—property protection, life, or liberty—it is superfluous.Sheldon Wolin argues that Locke’s theory of civil society generated an enduring animus towards politics.13 Locke provided the conceptual framework for later social theorizing that would displace government by providing a rationale for the direct (i.e., non-political) 11Locke, The Second Treatise, 57.12Locke, The Second Treatise, 47.13Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960), 313-14. 6 manipulation of the social system. Locke also marks the transition from classical political philosophy which understood government as the most comprehensive or authoritative public association to social philosophy which understands the political association as only a part of the larger social system.14 These features of Locke’s theory of civil society not only help us understand the non-governmental theorizing of American evangelicals in the nineteenth century but they provide insight into the emergence of the social sciences and other forms of non- political social intervention later in the century.During the eighteenth century, principles of Newtonian dynamics were wedded to Locke’s civil society; together they instigated a stunning revision of traditional political views. For instance, the notorious Bernard Mandeville drew radical conclusions from his investigation “into the nature of Society.”15 By assuming the independence of the social system (Locke) and its universal regularities (Newton), Mandeville concluded that many purported “evils” were actually essential for sociability, commerce, and the arts and sciences.16 It was not the “Friendly Qualities and kind Affections” nor the “real Virtues” that provide the foundations for society. As a matter of fact deeds that had previously been taken as threats (and, as such, subject to governmental repression) were necessary elements of the social system and productive of the social good. With careful management, these putative vices could prevent the spoilage and dissolution of society.1714Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? [1959] in Aeon J. Skoble and Tibor R. Machan, Political Philosophy: Essential Selections (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999), 435.15Bernard Mandeville [1670?-1733], "A Search into the Nature of Society [1723], in The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), 1:344.16Mandeville, “A Search into the Nature of Society,” 1:369.7 The most important elaboration of Lockean civil society came from the Scottish Enlightenment. These thinkers believed that they could uncover the hidden springs of the social system through a careful analysis of its observable data. Although he was by no means alone, Adam Smith is perhaps the most well-known advocate of the search for Newtonian regularities within an independent social system. In his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Smith denounced those who thought that the social system could be made to conform to an “ideal plan.” In his view, these visionary “projectors” inappropriately treated the social system as if each person within it did not possess independent principles of motion. Political rationalists, as these projectors would come to be known, failed to reckon with the consequences of imposing an ideal system on a populace which may well be animated by principles “different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it.”18In a telling follow-up, Smith suggests that if the principles which a government impresses on its citizens coincide with the principles of motion within the citizens, “the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful.” On the other hand, if the imposed principles are “opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”19 What is of particular interest is the implied relation between government and the social system. It is clear 17Giambattista Vico [1688-1744] argued similarly that ferocity, avarice, and ambition were the underlying causes of national strength, wealth, and wisdom. Out of this motley lot, civil society “causes the civil happiness to emerge.” See his Scienza nuova [1725] in Opere, ed. Fausto Nicolini (Milan: Ricciardi, 1953), pars. 132-33.18Adam Smith [1723-90], The Theory of Moral Sentiments, [1759], VI.ii.2.17, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. MacFie (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1982), 233-34.19Ibid.8 that the center of Smith’s account is human society considered as an interactive whole. Government is no longer privileged as the source of public authority; it is merely one of many inputs into an encompassing social machinery which, for Smith, has been providentially designed to combine its various components into a coherent whole productive of happiness.In the century after Locke, the independence and priority of the social system was widely affirmed. Many of Locke successors did not limit the operations of civil society to those formally expressed by the will of the majority. Instead, the independence of the social system from all forms of control (even those based in the consent of the majority) came to be identified with the naturalness of its universal processes. The Newtonian vocabulary, which was broadly applied to the operations of civil society, suggested that there is a set of internal dynamics within the social system sufficient for the purposes of social harmony and public happiness. The eighteenth century by and large rejected Hobbes’s authoritarianism as well as Locke’s will of the majority; in their place leading thinkers showcased the empirically-observable, universal, and thus, natural, interactions within the social system which reveal the rather ordinary means by which it adapts to its changing environment and leads to public happiness. The Moral Economy and Its GovernanceDuring the eighteenth century, British philosophers and theologians proposed moral theories that relied heavily on analogies drawn from Newtonian dynamics. Even in orthodox circles God’s interventionist and mysterious activities gradually receded before Newtonian regularities. These new models of God’s relation to the world typically equated his providence with the achievement of benevolent ends through an interactive moral system. These moral governance theories, as they came to be called, no longer localized God’s providence in his 9 interventions or particular graces but in the tendency of his moral economy to maximize happiness, freedom, and self-discipline.Bishop Butler, an influential English divine and moral philosopher, articulated a moral- economic model of God’s relation to the world in his important work, The Analogy of Religion (1736).20 In it Butler argued that God’s moral government is strictly analogous to his governance of the physical world: both spheres of divine operation contain a “scheme, system, or constitution” of fixed, general laws.21 In the moral economy, universal laws underwrite a uniform system of punishment and reward. When virtue is viewed from the perspective of the moral system as a whole, it exhibits a natural, long-term tendency to produce public good and social unity.22 Similarly, the punishment for sin is not mysterious or capricious; for Butler, it is simply the natural, uniform, and expected consequence of failing to observe the “essential constitution of things.”2320Butler’s work had an enormous effect on the thinking of New Divinity theologians in the century following its publication in 1736. In a comment made after his death by a close acquaintance, the following was reported of Lyman Beecher, the influential evangelical activist and New Divinity theologian. “Beside the Bible, I apprehend there was no book with which he was so familiar as Butler’s Analogy, and no portion of his lectures is more worthy of being given to the world than his lectures on Butler.” Cited in The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher [1864], 2 vols., ed. Barbara M. Cross (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1961), 2:426.21Joseph Butler [1692-1752], The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1906), 100, 37.22Butler, The Analogy of Religion, 47.23Butler, The Analogy of Religion, 51.10 Butler clearly abandoned older accounts of divine providence. Gone are the surprising acts of sovereign intervention and direct moral rule.24 Gone too is the mystery of divine purposes and methods.25 Butler’s doctrine of providence extends the logic, predictability, and uniformity of Newtonianism to God’s moral operations which can be empirically investigated as parts of a singular, homogeneous system.26 For Butler’s moral economy, the “natural course of things” is nothing more or less than the “conduct of Providence or the government of God.”27The evangelical wing of the American New Divinity movement adopted Butler’s account of God’s governance of his moral economy. Cyprian Strong, in a sermon delivered before the 24John Tyler [1742-1817], rector of Christ Church (Episcopal) of Norwich, Connecticut, made this point in a 1795 sermon. “And, in general, it seems scarce necessary for divine Providence to interpose, otherwise than by the original Constitution of Things, to exalt a People, of good Morals and sincere Piety, to a State of Prosperity, Peace, and Happiness; or to depress and chastise a vicious People; because it seems as though they would do this effectually themselves."John Tyler, The Blessing of Peace: A Sermon Preached at Norwich, on the Continental Thanksgiving, February 19, 1795 (Norwich, CT: John Trumbull, 1795), 12-13.25Jonathan Edwards [1703-58], a contemporary of Butler, defended a very different (and older) account of God’s moral governance. For Edwards, God’s governance was specific, interventionist and imposed; for Butler, God governs by Newtonian regularities, namely, those that are uniform, manifest, and analogous to universal gravitation. See Jonathan Edwards, “Concerning God’s Moral Government, a Future State, and the Immortality of the Soul,” in Remarks on Important Theological Controversies, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub., 2003), 2:512.26Butler, The Analogy of Religion, 51.27 Butler, The Analogy of Religion, 37.11 Connecticut Missionary Society in 1800, argued that there are “established laws of divine operation, in the moral as well as in the natural world.” The moral world’s “truly established” means realize their intended ends.28 Two years later, Joseph Lathrop suggested in a sermon before the Hampshire Missionary Society that God’s “moral government is uniform. It is conducted on the same general principles now, as it was formerly.”29 And John H. Livingston, in a sermon delivered before the New-York Missionary Society in 1804, declaimed that “the designs of Providence” are executed according to the “usual procedure in similar cases.” Livingston further characterized these designs as gradual and mundane, that is, they are brought about by non-miraculous, “ordinary causes and effects.”30Lyman Beecher, one of the most forceful proponents of the moral-economic conception, repeatedly identified the New Divinity with “the principles of Moral Government.”31 In his view, its fundamental tenet was that “[t]he God who governs the natural world according to stated laws, administers the concerns of his moral government by the operation of general principles.”32Beecher suggested that this account of God’s uniform mode of operation clearly distinguished 28Cyprian Strong [1743-1811], A Sermon Preached at Hartford, Before the Board of Trustees, of the Missionary Society, in Connecticut, at the Ordination, of the Rev. Jedidiah Bushnell, as Missionary to the New Settlements; January 15th, A. D. 1800 (Hartford: Hudson & Goodwin, 1800), 15.29Joseph Lathrop [1731-1820], A Sermon Preached to the Hampshire Missionary Society, at theirAnnual Meeting, the Fourth Tuesday in August—1802, in Northampton (Northampton, MA: William Butler, 1802), 13-14.30John Henry Livingston [1746-1825], A Sermon, Delivered Before the New-York Missionary Society, at their Annual Meeting, April 3, 1804 (New-York: T. & J. Swords, 1804), 18.31Charles Beecher in The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, 2:298.12 the New Divinity from Old School Calvinism.33 Like many other New Divinity thinkers, Beecher neutralized Jonathan Edward’s interventionist deity by adopting a theory of moral rule that took timeless universality as normative. By the early nineteenth century, the moral-economic model of God’s governance was widely assumed in America. This model, which assumed that political institutions were not essential for public happiness, served to rationalize evangelicals’ mounting pessimism regarding their young republic. It offered a theory of public life that left the status of political institutions open to constant appraisal. Within a moral economy directed at happiness, no individual, agency, or institution could have standing except and insofar as its causal relation to social happiness could be demonstrated. The radical contingency of all actors within moral-economic theories helps account for the tendency of later evangelicals to endorse both individual or voluntary agency as well as more institutional modes of promoting social happiness.Evangelical Political Analysis in the Early American RepublicFor thirty years after the revolution New Divinity clergymen were committed to preserving their fragile republic in spite of the growing acrimony between political factions, the moral laxity of the frontier, the rapid increase in middle class acquisitiveness, and the specter of foreign interference. As a response to these crises and the mounting reticence of governments to defend the interests of religion, New Divinity clergy (most of whom were evangelical) overtly abandoned the political rationalism of James Madison as well as the dominant “trickle down 32Lyman Beecher [1775-1863], “The Design, Rights and Duties, of Local Churches” [1819], in Works, vol. 2, Sermons Delivered on Various Occasions (Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1852), 2:230-31.33Charles Beecher in The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, 2:262, 283.13 theory of public influence.”34 By the second decade of the nineteenth century their public theorizing assumed that there would be very little cooperation between the various social orders and public institutions. Prior to 1810, New Divinity clergy typically reiterated the classic Puritan contention that religious institutions were essential to the nation. However, in doing so, they subtly reduced the complexity of the interactions between religion and government by only highlighting the causal influence that flows from religion to public institutions. This mono-directional emphasis broke with their predecessors’ more ecological views that had insisted on the mutual interdependence of religious and political institutions.35 By localizing religion in individual hearts at the center of a providential causal system, New Divinity clergy hoped that the republic could be invigorated by efforts directed at religious belief whether or not the state supported such efforts.In sermon after sermon New England clergymen also insisted that religion underwrote the public virtues that supported political institutions. This emphasis rejected rationalistic claims 34This phrase is adopted from Jonathan Sassi, A Republic of Righteousness: The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 62. James Madison’s “science of politics” erected formal constitutional structures with the intent of achieving benign outcomes with flawed human inputs. The evangelical wing of the New Divinity denied this tenet of Madisonian constructivism.35In making this claim, I do not mean to dispute the wealth of evidence proffered by Jonathan Sassi that the New England standing order did try to shore up the classic ecological relation between church and state in the period prior to 1800. What I intend to show is that as part of that general strategy, they adopted a causal thesis from the moral-economic conception of God’s moral governance, a thesis which ultimately subverted the cooperative relation between the church and state. See Sassi, A Republic of Righteousness, 59.14 (a la Madison) that only political institutions could neutralize the moral failings of the citizenry. Joseph Lathrop insisted that “the gospel inculcates those virtues, which immediately conduce to publick felicity.”36 Five months later, Elizur Goodrich argued that the gospel “does everything for our happiness in this world.” If its precepts, morality, and threat of future accountability were acknowledged, “the civil state would be in the best order, and in the most excellent condition.”37 Samuel Wales also argued tellingly that since “the constitution of nature which God has established” determines that vice tends to the misery and virtue to the happiness of individuals and communities, religion must be “considered as absolutely essential to the best state of public prosperity.” Not only did Wales affirm the causal relation between vice and virtue and their inevitable, public consequences, he assumed that religion uniquely promoted public virtue. In language reminiscent of Bishop Butler, Wales invoked the moral-economic “constitution of nature” and its theory of uniform social causation and emergent order.3836Joseph Lathrop, A Sermon, Preached in the First Parish in West-Springfield, December 14, 1786, Being the Day Appointed by Authority for Publick Thanksgiving (Springfield, MA: John Russell, 1787) in Political Sermons of the America Founding Era, 2d ed., 2 vols, ed. Ellis Sandoz (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998), 1:877-78.37Elizur Goodrich [1734-97], The Principles of Civil Union and Happiness Considered and Recommended: A Sermon, Preached Before his Excellency Samuel Huntington, Esq., Governor and Commander in Chief, and the Honorable the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut. Convened at Hartford, on the Day of the Anniversary Election, May 10th, 1787 (Hartford: Hudson and Goodwin, 1787) in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1:923-24. 38Samuel Wales [1748-94], The Dangers of our National Prosperity; and the Way to Avoid Them: A Sermon, Preached Before the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, at Hartford, May 12th, 1785 (Hartford: Barlow & Babcock, 1785), 25.15 New Divinity thinkers were also glad to acknowledge the classic republican concern with public virtue. The causal-ordering feature of the moral-economic theory enabled them to absorb the republican linkage between virtue and the public good into their political theorizing.39 No sooner did a New Divinity clergyman tout the importance of public virtue than he immediately asserted the religious preconditions that characterize its relation to the public good. Jedidiah Morse in a fast-day sermon reminded his readers to remember the inseparable connection between the virtues and the “prosperity of our country.” He further urged them not to forget that religion “strengthens all the motives of virtue; binds together the members of society, and tend[s] in the highest degree to promote universal happiness.”40 And Joseph Lathrop, in a stinging rebuke of both secular republicans and visionary constructivists, insisted that even the “purest republicanism” or constitution containing “the most refined principles of liberty” would be wiped away unless the doctrines and virtues that religion inculcates were given their proper place.4139Mark Noll helpfully points out that although evangelicals adopted the language of republican virtue, they infused it with their own account of the virtues. The multivalency of the term in the early republic assisted evangelicals and their attempt to synthesize it with their account of public happiness and its linkage with individual hearts. See America’s God, 214-16.40Jedidiah Morse [1761-1826], A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers, and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America. Delivered at Charlestown, April 25, 1799, the Day of the National Fast (Charlestown: Samuel Etheridge, 1799), 32.41Joseph Lathrop, God’s Challenge to Infidels to Defend Their Cause, Illustrated and Applied in a Sermon, Delivered in West-Springfield, May 4, 1797, Being the Day of General Fast (West-Springfield, MA: Edward Gray, 1797), 10.16 Some fifteen years later Asa Burton, pastor of the Church of Christ in Thetford, Vermont, concurred with “the celebrated Montesquieu . . . [that] . . . virtue is the life of the republic.” Where virtue does not reign, vice “will effect the ruin of every republic.” In order to empirically verify the role of virtue in the preservation of the republic, Burton and his clerical brethren scoured the records of the ancient and early-modern republics. In the end they concluded that a nation would be destroyed if it did not remain virtuous.42 Their investigation of the (causal) role of public virtue was underwritten by their moral-economic theory and its historiographical assumption that universal (and thus, timeless) principles could be extracted from previous republics.The evangelical coalition that rose to prominence in the early decades of the nineteenth century increasingly understood the gospel as a set of propositions divinely designed to bring about conversion and public happiness.43 Evangelical thinkers had little doubt that preached gospel propositions would activate the benevolent moral and mental machinery that ultimately issues in public happiness. The writings of those engaged in the evangelical coalition resonate with such themes. They were fully assured of the benevolence, uniformity, and strict analogies between the natural, social, moral, and political realms. Guided by Newtonian maxims such as “like causes will produce similar effects” evangelicals held that there were universal laws governing the lives of all peoples at all times.44 Once these universal aspects were teased out of the historical record, they could be exploited to guide evangelical energies and even foretell the 42Asa Burton [1752-1836], A Fast Sermon, Delivered at Thetford, January 12, 1815, on the Day Appointed by the President of the United States, for Fasting and Prayer, Throughout the Nation (Hanover: Charles Spear, 1815), 13-14.43See Joel L. From, “Uniform Operations of Grace: Nature, Mind, and Gospel in Early-Nineteenth Century Evangelicalism,” Fides et Historia 37, No. 2 (Summer/Fall 2005).17 prospects of the nation.45 A gospel of efficacious propositions operating on providentially-tuned mental capacities offered evangelicals a fundamental entrée into the causal network that animated the moral economy and its public life.46Central to early nineteenth-century evangelical political analysis is the conviction that individual hearts determine the moral and political qualities of the nation. William Allen, in an 1822 sermon before the Maine Missionary Society, argued that “by restoring order to the heart of man the political order shall be established.”47 Samuel Luckey, minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in New Haven, similarly affirmed that those moral principles “which relate to 44Stephen Peabody [1741-1819], A Sermon, Delivered at Concord, Before the Honourable General Court of the State of New Hampshire, at the Annual Election, Holden on the First Wednesday in June, 1797 (Concord, NH: George Hough, 1797) in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 2:1335-36. See also Lyman Beecher, A Reformation of Morals Practicable and Indispensable: A Sermon Delivered in New Haven October 27, 1812 (Utica, NY: Merell & Camp, 1813), 15-16.45Gordon Wood demonstrates that a similar Newtonian historiography infused the entire founding period: its leading lights also searched widely for universal political principles. This historiography was adopted by early republic evangelicals who also produced “an incredible jumble of references from every conceivable time and place,” a wholesale ransacking of the historical records. See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 8.46See Joel L. From, “The Uniform Operations of Grace: Nature, Mind, and Gospel in Early-Nineteenth Century Evangelicalism,” Fides et Historia 37, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2005).47William Allen [1770-1843], A Sermon Delivered in Farmington, June 26, 1822, Before the Maine Missionary Society, at the Fifteenth Anniversary (Hallowell: Goodale, Glazier & Co., 1822), 13.18 government, have their first existence in the heart.” They must be viewed “in this incipient state” if we are “to determine their elementary qualities.”48 Taken on their own, these claims give little indication of the implied mechanism that transfers the moral qualities of the heart to the larger public world. Therefore, it is understandable that David Kling would mistakenly suggest that for these evangelicals “the lump sum of individual virtue totaled the collective virtue of society.”49 Early nineteenth-century evangelicals did not believe that a simple aggregation of virtuous individuals is identical with social virtue. Rather, they believed that the influence of converted hearts would naturally, that is, through the providential processes of the moral economy, make its way into the surrounding public institutions. James Carnahan, president of theCollege of New Jersey at Princeton, acknowledged this linkage and the nature of its influence when, borrowing from the moral-economic model, he suggested that the purified heart, “from the very nature of things, exert[s] a salutary influence on the order of civil society.”50 A moral economy providentially directed at public happiness enabled evangelicals to integrate (by causally linking) gospel propositions, human hearts, personal liberty, virtue, and the public world. Many came to anticipate a full-blown millennium as a result of having uncovered these hidden principles. State and church control would no longer be necessary if the proper inputs were introducted into the moral system. At first, this account seemed to leave the existing 48Samuel Luckey [1791-1869], A Sermon, Addressed to the Legislature of Connecticut at the Annual Election in New-Haven, May 5th, 1824 (New-Haven: J. Barber, 1824), 7.49David W. Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders: The New Divinity and Village Revivals in Northwestern Connecticut 1792-1822 (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 54.50James Carnahan [1775-1859], “Bondage to Sin—Freedom by the Gospel,” The Presbyterian Preacher 1:4 (September 1832): 58-59.19 political and social order intact. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, more and more evangelicals explored the radical implications of their theory for existing political institutions.Early-Republic Evangelicals and the Displacement of the Political In the early nineteenth century, evangelical political pronouncements became increasingly radicalized. On the one hand, they continued to believe that converted hearts would strengthen the virtue of the citizenry and thereby the existing governmental apparatus. On the other hand, their increasing disappointment with recent political events led many to offer a radical critique of political institutions. Further, millennial speculations that sin could be eradicated through conversion posed an enormous threat to traditional accounts that had identified the political apparatus with the restraint of evil. With sin gone, what would become of politics?The emerging view that political institutions were passé did not simply assume that once sin was eliminated the social and public good would somehow emerge. Rather, the anticipation that sin could be eradicated held out the alluring prospect that the moral system could finally maximize the good implicit in its providential design. The success of evangelical revivals, cross- denominational coalitions, missionary work, and moral activism in the first third of the century foretold an impending era of love, joy, peace, and public happiness. The perfectionist and millennial elements within early nineteenth-century evangelicalism looked forward to the ultimate triumph of this marvelous moral machinery.No sooner had Joseph Lathrop affirmed that the gospel is “a mighty aid to government” than he suggested that governments and the gospel both seek the same ends. In his words, the gospel recommends the same manners that governments seek to enforce. Not content to merely note the overlap in these agencies, he suggested that if the gospel “had its proper influence, and 20 produced its designed effect, government would become very simple and easy—it would have nothing more to do, than just to regulate the prudentials of society.”51 In other words, the gospel achieves the purposes of government and thereby reduces it to what later social theorists will call the administration of things. In light of the acrimonious politicization of this period, many welcomed the stability offered by Lathrop’s non-politicizing theory of the gospel.52Lyman Beecher, in his well-known sermon, “A Reformation of Morals Practical and Indispensable” (1812), argued that only voluntary moral agencies could secure “the execution of the laws against immorality” given the ineffectiveness of government, popular suffrage, public opinion, and individual effort. These “disciplined moral militias” would “aid the civil magistrate in the execution of the laws.” But Beecher is ambivalent. He nowhere doubts that the existing laws are necessary, yet his hope that these new organizations will “exert a salutary general influence” betrays his doubts that governments can “retrieve what we have lost.” The scope of activities he assigns to these pressure groups, including correcting public opinion, instructing in 51Lathrop, God’s Challenge to Infidels, 9.52Eliphalet Porter [1758-1833], in a 1807 discourse before the Society for Propagating the GospelAmong the Indians and Others in North America, argued that the gospel controls lusts and passions and thus promotes purity, justice, and charity. Furthermore, and more directly to our point, the gospel “gives support to civil government, and efficacy to the laws. It is a friend of publick order, peace and prosperity.” Unlike Lathrop, Porter does not draw politically-radical inferences from his account, even though he attributes the production of justice to the gospel and acknowledges that it promises a “better and happier world than the present.” See Eliphalet Porter, A Discourse Before the Society for Promoting the Gospel Among the Indians and Others in North America, Delivered November 5th, 1807 (Boston: Monroe, Francis & Parker, 1808), 7.21 morals, preventing crime, and intimidating the enemy, suggests that Beecher hopes that they will do far more than simply encourage legislators to faithfully execute the laws.53Although Arthur Stansbury acclaimed the positive relation between the Bible and governance, like Beecher he offered a withering critique of the efficacy of governmental officials and powers. “The naked Bible will do more towards making upright judges, equitable rulers, obedient subjects, and honest men, than all the devices of all the legislators in the world.” His claims earlier in the same paragraph, however, suggest that governments will be scarcely needed if the Bible is broadly disseminated. In the end, the ineffectiveness of legislators is a matter of indifference for Stansbury since a widely disseminated Bible will enforce duties by “formidable” and “tremendous” sanctions. The law of God will discipline the overt acts and secret intentions of men’s hearts. Perhaps unconsciously expressing his own political alienation, he puts the following de-politicizing contention into the second person. “All your penal statutes, your courts and constables, your fines, and prisons, and gibbets, are nothing compared to this.” If Stansbury is correct, the “enlightened patriot” who loves her country and who wishes to see her “freedom and prosperity placed on a sure and lasting foundation” must abandon the political scene and simply disseminate the scriptures.54In the wake of their disappointment with the political situation in the early nineteenth century, evangelicals proposed an account that threatened political institutions. Their challenge 53Lyman Beecher, “A Reformation of Morals Practical and Indispensable” [1812], in Works, 2:95-96.54Arthur J. Stansbury [1781-1865], The Christian Duty of Spreading the Scriptures: A Sermon Delivered before the Orange Bible and Tract Society, at their Annual Meeting, in June, 1814 (New York: Whiting & Watson, 1814), 11-12.22 issued from the contention that Christianity is the “effectual remedy for human depravity.”55 Whereas most previous political theories had merely attempted to control, neutralize, or redirect human imperfections, evangelicals offered nothing less than a complete remedy. Samuel Miller spoke for many of his evangelical peers when he ridiculed other attempts to reform, purify, or “tranquilize” society. Literature, science, and political orthodoxy had all been shown to be a “vain dream.”56 Miller’s influential colleague in Scotland, Thomas Chalmers, concurred. In a missionary society meeting in Edinburgh he affirmed that only the Christian faith could dry up “the source of all those sins, and sufferings, and sorrows, which have spread such dismal and unseemly ravages over the face of society.”57These revolutionary claims had particularly troubling consequences for those political theories that understood government in terms of its evil-restraining functions.58 Jeremiah 55Samuel Miller [1769-1850], A Sermon, Delivered Before the New-York Missionary Society, at Their Annual Meeting, April 6th, 1802 (New-York: T. & J. Swords, 1802), 51-52.56Ibid.57Thomas Chalmers [1780-1847], The Utility of Missions Ascertained by Experience: A Sermon, Preached Before the Society in Scotland (Incorporated by Royal Charter) for Propagating Christian Knowledge; at Their Anniversary Meeting, in the High Church of Edinburgh, on Thursday, June 2, 1814 (Edinburgh: Thomas Turnbull, 1815), 7-8.58In the classic republican view, the process of public deliberation and negotiation provides the context within which those who come together out of self-interest learn to regard the interests of others and the good the whole. An account of the positive functionality of government is strangely absent from much of the political theorizing of the founding era and the early republic. An emphasis on the positive contribution of political life to moral and social development would have perhaps forestalled the radical displacement of government even if its negative functions 23 Atwater, in an early nineteenth-century election-day sermon, reaffirmed this influential view. Like Lathrop who suggested that government would only be left “to regulate the prudentials of society” if the gospel had its way, Atwater concluded that if all men were virtuous, there would be little need for government.59 Alexander Archibald agreed that once the gospel is cordially embraced “the whole face of society will be changed.” This change in the moral condition of society would “subvert, or render useless, many institutions (e.g., “the whole expensive machinery of war”) now deemed useful and necessary.”60 Given the standard (negative) view of government, evangelical theorizing not only reduced the necessary scope and functions of the institution, but threatened to displace it entirely. Jeremiah Atwater suggested yet another reason why the privileged place of government should be reconsidered. He argued that although it is the task of government to restrain evil, there is, nevertheless, an efficacious system of moral restraint already operating through the habits and institutions of society that makes governmental fear, force, and penal codes redundant.When these pre-political practices have their proper effect “little is left for the magistrate: The business of government is already anticipated.” Even though governmental restraint might seem were realized by other curative agents.59Jeremiah Atwater [1773-1835], Sermon, Preached Before His Excellency Isaac Tichener, Esq. Governour, the Honorable the Council and House of Representatives of the State of Vermont, at Burlington, on the Day of the Anniversary Election, October 14, 1802 (Middlebury, VT: Huntington & Fitch, 1802), 7.60Archibald Alexander [1772-1851], The World to be Reclaimed by the Gospel [1828], Luce Library Archives, Princeton Theological Seminary, Missionary Paper, No.10, 1-2. This address was delivered at a missionary meeting in the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia at the close of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the American Board of Foreign Missions.24 to be needed in the current situation, Atwater believed that these deeper practices were already quite effective in accomplishing the tasks of government even though they were often “deemed unworthy of notice.”61But how, exactly, would public happiness come about in the absence of sin and governmental restraint? Evangelicals offered a both a theory and an example of how the good of the whole could be achieved apart from governmental agency. Once again, their moral-economic theory gave them reason to believe that the providential economy would finally be able to achieve the good implicit in its design. Once sin was overcome, the moral economy would naturally bring about its edenic possibilities. Furthermore, evangelicals offered their own cooperative experience as an example of this moral economy at work. Their own recent experiences gave them reason to believe that new, non-political means could overcome seemingly endemic problems and achieve the public good.David Tappan, patriot, federalist, and pastor of a church in Newbury, Massachusetts, invoked this moral economy when he argued that “love to God” is the “great law of moral attraction.” In his view, this love would draw the “affections and efforts of all to one common center, the good of the whole.” He argued that this love, the moral analog of gravity, would ensure that the universal practice of those virtues would exalt the nation. Tellingly, his version of the causal series—love, virtue, national exaltation—does not mention political life. A harvest of goodness would be produced by the moral economy once its impediments were removed.6261Atwater, Sermon, Preached Before His Excellency Isaac Tichener, 18-19.62David Tappan [1752-1803], A Sermon Preached Before His Excellency John Hancock, Esq. Governour; His Honor Samuel Adams, Esq. Lieutenant-Governour; the Honourable the Council, Senate, and House of Representatives, of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, May 30, 1792. Being the Day of General Election (Boston: Thomas Adams, 1792), n.p.25 Thomas Chalmers drew yet another analogy between gravity and the subduing efficacy of the Christian faith over human minds. He expected Christianity to dry up the source of sins and thus “annihilate that disturbing force which has jarred the harmony of the moral world.” Once the jarring force of disorder and sin is extirpated Chalmers predicted that the entire moral world would “tend obediently to the Deity as its centre and its origin.”63 Chalmers believed that the harmony of the moral world preceded the disorder brought about by sin. When sin is annihilated there is every reason to expect that this economy will display its long-awaited fruit.The view that human and divine actions occur within an economy designed to bring about public happiness underwrote the sanguine, and often non-governmental, expectations of evangelicals in the early nineteenth century. Since sin alone prevented the splendid moral machinery from accomplishing its intended ends, the social harmony that evangelicals anticipated is simply the moral economy in its full and untrammeled operation. That “a happier order of things will arise” is not just vague and wishful thinking; it is the anticipation that the moral economy will finally be able to bring about the ends which had eluded the best attempts of politicians and philosophers.64Early nineteenth-century evangelicals believed, furthermore, that their own experience exemplified a new type of non-political public agency. They noted that the “party spirit” that had characterized their previous relations and which increasingly infected the life of the young nation had been totally extinguished in their ranks. They saw their success in overcoming their own rivalries as a model of how factionalism might be overcome more generally. The success of their63Thomas Chalmers, The Utility of Missions Ascertained by Experience, 7-8.64John Campbell [1770-1855], The Acclamation of the Redeemed: A Sermon, Delivered Before The Missionary Society, London, in Surry Chapel, on Wednesday Morning, May 11, 1808, 2d ed.(Edinburgh: Waugh & Innes, 1818), 35.26 voluntary organizations and the whole-hearted cooperation of those who differed on important issues bespoke a new era of social conviviality. Contrary to the received wisdom of the ages, factions could be neutralized without heavy-handed methods.Evangelical cooperation across denominational lines suggested that a broader social rapprochement might be achieved since the imperfections of human nature which supported factionalism were evidentally defeasible. If the converted could overcome religious factionalism for the sake of the gospel, then the long-standing pessimism about human nature would have to be reconsidered. Evangelical nonpartisanship was not only a precondition for their activism, but a sign of what was more generally possible.Early republic evangelicals were amazed at the cooperation manifest within their various social ranks and denominations. They were particularly encouraged by the participation of European nobles and princes in their movement. Charles Coffin, president of Greeneville College, noted with satisfaction that “all ranks of men from the highest to the lowest may find in connexion with bible societies the fairest field for harmonious exertion. . . . In bible societies the artificial distinctions of civil society have no place.65 Joseph Lathrop noted that “here all distinctions of sect and of rank are entirely lost. Here christians of all denominations unite. Here princes, noblemen, members of parliament, and dignitaries in the church, act in concert with common citizens and private christians."66 The distinctions of civil society suddenly seemed passé. It was commonly understood that this broad cordiality recapitulated the experience of the 65Charles Coffin [1775-1853], A Discourse Preached Before the East Tennessee Bible Society at their Annual Meeting in Knoxville, April 30th, 1817 (Knoxville: Heiskell & Brown, 1817), 32. 66Joseph Lathrop, A Sermon, Preached in Springfield, before the Bible Society, and the Foreign Missionary Society, in the County of Hampden, at their Annual Meeting, August 31, 1814 (Springfield: Thomas Dickman, 1814), 11-12.27 early church and offered a portent of the approaching millennium.67 The concurrence of Christians from various denominations and social locations proffered “a token for good.”68Evangelicals understood that their activist organizations broadened the range of social and political possibilities for transformed hearts. As a matter of public record, their missionary efforts sacrificed “the bigotries of party on the altar of Apostolic zeal.”69 John Blair Smith, president of Union-College, in an address to the Northern Missionary Society and against the backdrop of European political convolutions, suggested that evangelical missionary efforts had revived the spirit of primitive Christianity and had extinguished party spirit completely.70 And according to Alexander Proudfit, a minister from Salem, Christians were rapidly abandoning parties, social distinctions, and “rancorous reflections upon each other” for the sake of effecting a“more general diffusion of the Gospel.”7167David Bogue [1750-1825], Objections Against a Mission to the Heathen, Stated and Considered: A Sermon, Preached at Tottenham Court Chapel, Before the Founders of the [London] Missionary Society, 24 Sep. 1795, 1st American ed. (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1811), 10.68The Address and Constitution of the New-York Missionary Society (New-York: T. & J. Swords,1796), 10.69Ibid., 3-4.70John Blair Smith [1756-99], The Enlargement of Christ's Kingdom, the Object of a Christian's Prayers and Exertions: A Discourse, Delivered in the Dutch Church, in Albany; Before the Northern Missionary Society in the State of New-York, at their Organization, Feb. 14, 1797 (Schenectady: C. P. Wyckoff, 1797), 34.71Alexander Proudfit [1770-1843], A Sermon Preached Before the Northern Missionary Society in the State of New-York, at their First Annual Meeting, in Troy, February 8; and by Particular 28 Evangelicals abandoned the solutions offered for factionalism by previous political thinkers. Their nonpartisan cooperation suggested that factions could be overcome without repressive governments or appeals to abstractions such as natural law, rational community, or universal citizenship. Life within their voluntary organizations suggested, furthermore, an alternative to the formal constitutionalism that threatened to collapse in the increasing rancor of the late 1790s and early 1800s. Evangelicals did not project a wishful scheme of social melioration; in their view, their organizational experience had simply brought to light the true trajectory of renovated hearts within the moral economy.The Unity of Evangelical Public EngagementEvangelical political theory assumes that all agents operate within a providentially- designed moral economy. Governmental agencies are in no sense privileged; they are simply co- actors in a broad coalition directed at a providential end. Nevertheless, there is no a priori bias against governmental institutions and their production of the good. Since every agency must be constantly appraised with respect to its production of the good, it is likely that the efficacy of any given agency, (e.g., government), will vary as circumstances change. This flexibility with respect to agencies and their contingent production of the good helps account for the paradoxical shift in evangelicalism from anti-political musings in the early nineteenth century to the much more positive appraisal of political instrumentality in the decades following. This seeming reversal is rooted in the evangelical appraisal of the changing efficacy of governmental institutions. The success of their private efforts led them to see their agency as a potent force for good within the political/constitutional framework. After overcoming their Request, in Albany, March 6, 1798, at a Special Meeting of the Society (Albany, NY: Loring Andrews, 1798), 28-29.29 lingering distaste for party wrangling, evangelicals energetically pursued the public good within political institutions after 1830.72Even in this new era of political activism, however, evangelicals did not abandon their concern for personal conversion and its moral-economic relation to the good; they simply added other efficacious agents to that of converted souls. In other words, they discovered other entrée points into the causal system of the moral economy, including concerted political activism. Both types of agency demonstrably tended towards public happiness.By investigating their place in the moral system, evangelical political theory re-ordered the central concepts of liberal, republican, and Puritan views. The order which emerged from their analysis of the efficacious inputs into the providential system compelled them to retain important elements of these other systems. However, the moral-economic account did more than simply conjoin disparate theories of public life: it theoretically synthesized them as causal linkages between life-transforming religion, public virtue, and public well-being. Further, this account’s flexibility permitted evangelicals to infuse even secular ideals with Protestant content by defining virtue, liberty, and public happiness in ways consistent with their Puritan heritage.This important meta-theory behind the varieties of evangelical engagement offers a unified account of their persistent isolationist-conversionist and activist polarities. This seeming paradox which still persist in contemporary evangelicalism must be understood as the manifestation of the theory’s agency flexibility applied to differing conditions. It is not possible to say once and for all which agencies will be productive of the good nor how long they will continue to do so. Early American evangelicals took up the task of continuously re-appraising 72The classic account of this emergence of evangelicals into the political scene after 1830 is Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 22-23, 278.30 their agencies and adjusting them as needs be. The moral-economic account reassured them that effective agencies could be found and that they would be productive of the good.31

The Transcendence of Politics: Evangelical Political Theory in the Early American Republic

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