B. Period Histories

5405. Garrison, Winfred Ernest. The march of faith; the story of religion in America since 1865. New York, Harper, 1933. 332 p. 33–11236 BR525.G3

"Sources and bibliography": p. 309–316.

A swift-paced narrative of American religious history since the Civil War, treated as inseparable from the economic, political, scientific, and cultural life of the time. The opening chapters, which sketch the Reconstruction era, the westward movement, and the "Gilded Age" of financial speculation, are primarily social history, although focused on religious activity. With a chapter on Moody and Sankey and other revivalists Professor Garrison turns more specifically to the history of religion. He recounts with interesting detail of men and events the spread of the new liberalism in religious thought, efforts at church union (he is himself prominent in the world ecumenical movement), the rise of the social gospel, and the increased activity of missionsin America’s age of overseas expansion. The records of individual denominations are briefly reviewed, a chapter being given to Roman Catholicism and another to the formation of the interdenominational Federal Council of the Churches of Christ. Social history is again to the fore in the chapters on the connection of churches with big business and their role in the First World War and the postwar years of prosperity. Finally the author examines miscellaneous doctrines, the groups outside the main Protestant sects, mystic and non-Christian cults, etc., and concludes with the argument that religion must deal in the matters of political concern, but should do so in a tolerant rather than a crusading spirit.

5406. Humphrey, Edward F. Nationalism and religion in America, 1774–1789. Boston, Chipman Law Pub. Co., 1924. 536 p. 24–12770 BR520.H75. Bibliography: p. [517]–532.

In the formative years of the American Nation, the period covered in this historical monograph, "the pulpit was the most powerful single force in America for the creation and control of public opinion," and religion, according to the author, was one of the more potent factors in the forging of the United States. Because of the separation of church and state in the new Republic, he points out, most American historians have deliberately omitted the religious element from constitutional history, in spite of its importance, to which both de Tocqueville and Bryce testified. Dr. Humphrey analyzes in a scholarly manner, with many quotations from contemporary sermons and documents, the contributions or the opposition of the various churches to political independence during the Revolution. This forms the first part of his book; the second part treats the independent and national organization of the churches during the Confederation. It also includes chapters on the separation of church and state, the influence of the churches in the Continental Congress and in the making of the Constitution, and their welcome of the new National Government.

5407. Johnson, Charles A. The frontier camp meeting; religion’s harvest time. Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1955. 325 p. illus. 55–8783 BX8475.J64. Bibliography: p. 303–319.

The author, studying evangelical revivalism in the trans-Allegheny West from 1800 to 1840, describes the frontier camp meeting as one of the most important social institutions serving to tame backwoods society. Recreating "Camp Meetin’ Time" through historical analysis documented from contemporary accounts, appraisals, sermons, and hymns, he is at pains to correct the caricatures and distortions which, he thinks, have pervaded 19th-century fiction, the biased writings of non-Methodist churchmen, and even secular histories. It was the Methodist itineracy system which chiefly developed the camp meeting technique, and the Methodists were almost alone in using it after 1805, although open-air gatherings were usual during the Great Revival or Second Great Awakening of 1800, and the first planned camp meeting was probably under Presbyterian auspices. To the "most fabulous of all great Revival meetings," at Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Kentucky, in 1801, there came Baptist and Methodist preachers as well as 18 Presbyterian ministers; the "frenzied worship" continued for six days, with attendance anywhere between ten and twenty-five thousand. The "falling exercise," "the jerks," rolling, dancing, singing, and barking were engaged in by an estimated one to two thousand converts. The writer follows the camp meeting from this primitive form into its maturity under Methodist discipline, which endeavored to restrain emotional excesses. He tells of individual circuit riders, the evangelical doctrine they preached, camp meeting hymnody, and the social life in the "Tented Grove"—"the most mammoth picnic possible." He cites contemporary endorsements and criticisms. By the 1840’s the institution was dying out, supplanted by permanent auditoriums and cabins invading the old forest camp sites, and by the churches in the rising towns.

5408. Morais, Herbert M. Deism in eighteenth century America. New York, Columbia University Press, 1934. 203 p. (Columbia University. Faculty of Political Science. Studies in history, economics and public law, no. 397) 34–23477 H31.C7, no. 397 BL2760.M6 1934a

"List of authorities": p. 179–193.

A dissertation, exhaustively documented, which studies the "remarkable spread of scepticism" in America during the latter 18th century. The liberal philosophy of the Age of Reason, as it appeared among the educated upper classes in the colonies and during the Revolution, did not for the most part extend to atheism. Jefferson, who sought to do away with clericalism and return to the pure teachings of Jesus, was more typical of American deism than were radicals such as Ethan Allan, whose ponderous book of 1784, Reason theOnly Oracle of Man, was the first American text explicitly to reject Christianity. The author examines the European background of deism, its spread in colonial America through the importation of rationalistic books and the introduction of Newtonian science, its leaders and influence during the Revolution, and itsmilitant stage in the early national period. Inspired by the French Revolution, Thomas Paine published his Age of Reason in 1794, attacking the principle of Biblical revelation. There arose a vigorous atheistic movement, led by a former Baptist clergyman, Elihu Palmer, with a widespread establishment of deistic societies and freethinking newspapers. Dr. Morals traces the course of deism, and the opposition of the clergy and colleges, through the turn of the century to its collapse following the explosion of evangelical Christianity in the Second Great Awakening.

5409. Schneider, Herbert W. Religion in 20th century America. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1952. 244 p. illus. (The Library of Congress series in American civilization) 52–8219 BR525.S34

This closely written book by a professor of philosophy and religion at Columbia convincingly explains the transformation of religious habits, ideas, and institutions that has taken place in America during the last 50 years. The first three chapters survey the secularization and socialization of religious life. Religion is now, Dr. Schneider states, "one of America’s biggest businesses," conducted by trained professionals among whom laymen are increasingly numerous; religious activities are chiefly directed, not to the salvation of individual souls, but against secular evils and social problems; religion, "like government," pervades all areas of life—education, medicine, politics, business, art: "Anything can be done religiously, and nothing is safe from ecclesiastical concern." The author examines the changes in America’s religious conscience, the rapprochement of psychiatry and religion, the far-reaching spread of the social gospel, and its recent more realistic "rethinking." The second half of the text, which is separated from the first three chapters by a set of illustrative "Exhibits," is an analysis of changing trends in theological thought—the various reactions to 19th-century liberalism of fundamentalism, neo-orthodoxy, existentialism, humanism—and of the modern "art of worship." The last chapter discusses the interpretation of "Varieties of Religious Experience since William James." A useful compilation supplementing this is volume 256, March 1948, of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Organized Religion in the United States, edited by Ray H. Abrams (Philadelphia, 1948. 265 p.). Papers by a variety of experts are arranged in five groups: "Our Contemporary Religious Institutions,’’ "Relationship to Other Institutions" (state, class, family), "The Churches and Social Action," "Trends and Future Prospects," and "Statistics and Bibliography."

5410. Sweet, William Warren. Religion in colonial America. New York, Scribner, 1942. xiii, 367 p. 42–19309 BR520.S88. "Selected Bibliography": p. 341–356.

5411. Sweet, William Warren. Religion in the development of American culture, 1765–1840. New York, Scribner, 1952. xiv, 338 p. 52–9960 BR520.S882. Bibliography: p. 315–332.

The author of The Story of Religion in America (no. 5401) has spent a lifetime studying the religious history of his country, and writes of it in the style of the urbane scholar addressing a literate lay public. Religion in Colonial America is the first installment of a general history by periods. It relates the transplanting of 17th-century Western European religion to the Colonies, and the adaptation of the various faiths to the physical, social, and political conditions of their new setting. The first arrivals, the Anglican Church in Virginia, and the Puritans in New England, founded state churches; after the Restoration (1660) adherents of other faiths—Baptists, Quakers, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, German pietists, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians— increasingly brought diversity, individualism, and liberalizing influences to the American religious scene. Dr. Sweet begins with a general chapter on the religious motives in the planting of the Colonies (said Hakluyt, "greatly for the inlargement of the gospill of Christ"), then tells the story of each denomination through the whole period. His last chapters deal with the Great Awakening in New England and the South, and the general advance toward disestablishment and religious liberty. Ten years later there followed Religion in the Development of American Culture, 1765–1840. Here the stress is on the radical factor in American religion, especially on the frontier. The better pioneers, Dr. Sweet says, were nonconformists or heretics, "impatient of the old and open-minded to the new and untried," who found opportunity for self-expression in the new West. "The story of experimentation in organized religion on the frontier constitutes one of the most significant and important aspects of the development of the new western civilization and culture." The first three chapters on religion during the Revolution, and the subsequent breaking of Old World ties to form new national organizations are, as in the preceding volume, traced through the separate threads of the individual denominations, and these same threads are followed in the account of the westward movement. Then come chapters on general aspects: "Barbarism vs. Revivalism," "Religion and Our Cultural Foundations" (the founding of colleges and seminaries), "The Revolt against Calvinism,"missions, and "The Frontier Utopias": Mormons, Shakers, and other religious communities. An epilogue accepts, "with modifications," F. J. Turner’s thesis of the frontier as the central theme in American history of this period. The third and fourth volumes of this series, which will bring the story to the present day, are still awaited.

5412. Sweet, William Warren, ed. Religion on the American frontier, 1783–[1850] New York and Chicago, 1931–46. 4 v.

5413. [Vol. 1] The Baptists, 1783–1830, a collection of source material; general introd. by Shirley Jackson Case. New York, Holt, 1931. 652 p. 31–26855 BX6235.S8. Bibliography: p. 629–637.

5414. Vol. 2. The Presbyterians, 1783–1840, a collection of source materials. New York, Harper, 1936. 939 p. 36–15032 BX8935.S75. Bibliography: p. 888–917.

5415. Vol. 3. The Congregationalists, a collection of source materials. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1939. 435 p. 39–33291 BX7131.S9. Bibliography: p. [405]–418.

5416. Vol. 4. The Methodists, a collection of source materials. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1946. 800 p. A47–717 BX8235.S92. Bibliography: p. [731]–770.

The sources on which Dr. Sweet based this frontier study and his history of Methodism (no. 5458) were assembled in a comprehensive search of the manuscript and out-of-print collections of church and seminary libraries in the region. He has made a share of his labors accessible to other scholars in this 4-volume collection of source materials for the Baptist, Presbyterian, Congregationalist, and Methodist churches in the trans-Allegheny West. Each volume begins with a general introduction of about a hundred pages explaining the status of the denomination at the end of the Revolution, and the stages and various aspects of its westward migration. Then come extracts from letters and reports, church minutes, the memoirs of preachers and missionaries, records of conferences and of church trials, and a sampling of documents of many other varieties. Each volume includes a long bibliography.

5417. Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. Meetinghouse Hill, 1630–1783. New York, Macmillan, 1952. 344 p. illus. 52–11102 BR530.W5

A social picture of religion in colonial New England, with the meetinghouse on the hilltop "in sharp focus." The writer’s purpose, carried out with balance and charm, is, "by recalling typical procedures in relation to various aspects of community life, to suggest attitudes which [the meetinghouse] helped to establish and patterns of group action which it helped to make habitual." She has based her interpretation on town and church records, sermons, diaries, letters, and other memorials of the theocratic New England of the 17th and 18th centuries. Her narrative incorporates many well-chosen quotations. Of the five books, the first, "Bound Up Together in a Little Bundle of Life," describes, mostly by means of particular instances, the establishment of congregation, meetinghouse, and village. Book 2, "Zion is Not a City of Fools" (Cotton Mather), is on the learning and the sermons of the clergy. Book 3, "Noises about the Temple," describes "Where to Set," how to sing, etc. Book 4 deals with the "Rule of the ’Lord Brethren,’" the government and authority of the congregation. Book 5, "Powder in the Meeting-house," illustrates the close association of the New England pulpit with the cause of liberty.