American Christianity

American Society of Church History
Two Centuries of Christianity in America: An Overview

Author(s): Paul Boyer
Source: Church History, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 544-556
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church
History
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PERSPECTIVES
Two Centuries of Christianity in Amer

An Overview
PAUL BOYER
While the year 2000 did not prove to be the eschatological block-
buster that some of our bolder Bible prophecy popularizers antici-
pated, nor the year when all our computers melted down, as some
Y2K alarmists predicted, it did provoke some historians to step back
from their usual topics of inquiry to attempt to sum up in a broad
overview fashion some of the major developments in the century just
past.1 A spate of books like Harvard Sitkoff's edited collection of
essays, Perspectives on Modern America, with its subtitle, "Making
Sense of the Twentieth Century," were the result.2 In that spirit, as
2000 approached, I undertook an even more presumptuous venture: a
brief overview of not one but two centuries of Christianity in America,
from 1800 to the present, as a kind of outline sketch for a hypothetical
book on the subject. The result is this essay. Once I had embarked on
such a potentially foolhardy project, the practical question remained:
What meaningful generalizations about two centuries of American
Christianity could one offer in a relatively short space such as that
provided by Church History's "Perspectives" feature? Still, Cotton
Mather once boasted that he had boiled down the entire plan of
1. An earlier version of this paper was given on 10 January 1999 at the Washington, D.C.
meeting of the American Society of Church History. My thanks to then-ASCH presi-
dent Ronald Numbers of the Department of the History of Medicine and the History
of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the invitation to participate in
that conference and to Professor R. Marie Griffith of the Princeton University Depart-
ment of Religion for her thoughtful comments on that earlier paper.
2. Harvard Sitkoff, ed., Perspectives on Modern America: Making Sense of the Twentieth
Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Readers of the present essay may
also be interested in my contribution to the Sitkoff volume, chap. 12, "The Chameleon
with Nine Lives: American Religion in the Twentieth Century," 247-74.
Paul Boyer is Merle Curti Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-

Madison.
? 2001, The American Society of Church History

Church History 70:3 (September 2001)
544
PERSPECTIVES 545
salvation onto a
thousand or so w
Confronting such
profound new in
that, like Saul's
and give coheren
both temptation
because the state
move at this poi
tion of essays ent
most striking cha
its eclectic diver
synthesis, or eve
Whether this oug
question. One mi
scholarship in this
itself and of Am
exceptions, Amer
to the lure of the
areas of interest
our efforts at syn
I. CHRISTIANITY,
In this spirit, t
characteristics or
rience from Indep
that this bypass
important part of
not by any mean
deed, reflecting
be narrower still,
side of the story
question: how re
experience to un
traditions in Am
new-some may s
bird's eye overvi
tions.
3. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, eds., New Directions in American Religious History (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997). For my review of that work, see Paul Boyer,
"Testimony Time: Historians Reflect on Current Issues in American Religious His-
tory," Evangelical Studies Bulletin 15 (1998): 1-5.
546 CHURCH HISTORY
I am struck, first
remarkable tenacity
caveats about stati
data, the stark con
extent, Canada), on
Europe on the other
is quite breathtaki
comparative religio
Science Journal repo
important in your
Britain, 19 percent,
1989, the Gallup o
"religion index" in
On this scale, the U
Germany, Norway,
the thirties. Bring
twenty-one.4
Education is one
American religion.
founded our earliest
often representin
planted colleges ac
ishing state of Ch
college, enrolling h
nation's wealthiest
Christian scholarsh
Secularization, of c
of American religi
retains interpretive
critical and skeptic
ity's influence in Am
status in the larger
made, one is left w
4. Mattei Gogan, "The De

Science Journal 47 (199
Religion: American Faith
5. George Marsden, The So
Established Nonbelief (N
6. For an introduction t
Religion and Modernizat
(New York: Oxford Uni
Religious Population: Ou
the Scientific Study of
clarity and includes a u
PERSPECTIVES 547
fact about Americ

vitality and vigor
contrary.
But this, in turn, simply raises a host of further questions. Precisely
what is this "Christianity" that looms so large in American history?
Once we have acknowledged its endurance, we are struck with equal
force by its diversity. I am continually impressed by American Chris-
tianity's shape-shifting in different time periods, regions, and social
groups. Slaves and their masters in the antebellum South, abolitionists
and their opponents in the North, capitalist robber barons in the
Gilded Age and Social Gospel critics of capitalism in the Progresssive
Era, anti-Darwinians in the 1920s, civil rights marchers in the 1950s
and 1960s, pacifists in the 1930s and Cold Warriors in the 1950s, and
in the 1990s, feminist theologians and fundamentalists who believed
that the reign of Antichrist was just around the corner-all found in
Christianity a religion that spoke to their condition and (or so they
claimed) validated their worldview.7 No doubt all great religions
have this chameleon-like quality, but in Christianity this capacious
adaptability seems especially pronounced, and nowhere more so than
in the United States.
In this context, one is struck by the comment of the escaped slave
and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass in his antebellum autobi-
ography: "I love the pure, peaceable and impartial Christianity of
Christ. I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping,
cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.
Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the
religion of this land Christianity."8
Our hypothetical overview history of American Christianity since
1800 would certainly also emphasize the patriotic theme, demonstrat-
ing how Christianity has adapted itself to American nationalism.
Politicians and religious leaders from the Revolutionary era onward
have wrapped their policies in the cloak of divine purpose, to broad
public approbation.9 While Dan Quayle of "potatoe" fame is the only
national politician I have heard in recent years explicitly describe
7. For a specific instance of the way Christianity has served diametrically opposed groups
and purposes in American history, see John R. McKivigan and Mitchell Snay, eds.,
Religion and the Antebellum Antislavery Debate (Athens: University of Georgia Press,
1999).
8. David W. Blight, ed., appendix to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, Written by Himself (1845; reprint, Boston: Bedford Books, 1993), 105.
9. Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in
Revolutionary New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Ernest Lee
Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1968).
548 CHURCH HISTORY
America as "God's ch
much of our public rh
In some ways, Morm
ity of American Ch
successors, the Chur
creative blending of
place, its veneration
dence, Missouri, in
Jesus Christ of Latter
the fusing of Christ
long characteristic of
To be sure, this fusio
in recent decades. T
studied, for examp
United States, they
degeneracy that will e
with which they app
American roots. Inde
nence in wickedness
classic assumption of
Along with its rami
religion and patriotism
of American Christia
lism has characteriz
Mark, commanded
preach the gospel to e
American setting it r
of mission and the ch
mutually re-enforcin
thousands of evang
subsaharan Africa an
Protestant and Rom
that not only affects
stimulus to religious
current interest in th
10. Leonard J. Arrington and

Saints (New York: Knopf,
11. Paul Boyer, When Time
(Cambridge: Harvard Un
Prophecy," 225-53.
PERSPECTIVES 549
promises to illumi
American Christia
A fifth distincti
counting-is its role
social acceptance.
Mather identified
divine grace, and
have remained ce
reform and civic
American reform
inspired many th
distribute tracts
classes; visit the h
utopian communi
the United Society
While the impor
been recognized,
tual meaning of
engaged in these
school movement
reforms often not
to the volunteers
group that could
loneliness and tem
to study the soc
reforms, whether
or the Christian C
have provided the
Certainly such a c
Eikenberry, the
neighborhood's m
12. Kenneth Scott Latour

Harper and Brothers
Beyond Missions: The
World War II," in New
D. G. Hart, 362-93.
13. Robert H. Abzug, C
(New York: Oxford Un
in America, 1820-1920
The Shaker Experience i
Yale University Press,
14. Boyer, Urban Masse
gence of the Middle Cla
Cambridge University
550 CHURCH HISTORY
in the 1940s. The Loy

iliary, met each week
the pledge card she i
ately, I was not unde
That I May Give my B
I promise, God helpin
Not to buy, drink, sell,
Alcoholic liquors whil
From all tobacco I'll abs
And never take God's name in vain.
Closely related to religion's role in the shaping of middle-class ident

in nineteenth-century America has been its continuing role in provi
citizens who find themselves uprooted or in new geographic surroun
ings with the reassurance of membership in a social group, and some
times with a means of upward mobility. Alexis de Tocqueville, in
Democracy in America (1838), famously noted the power of public opi
and the importance of social acceptance in an egalitarian and hig
mobile society, and church attendance has historically provided an a
nue for building a social network quickly, while the particular churc
chosen has sometimes served as a marker not only of theologica
doctrinal commitment, but also of social standing or social aspiration
This line of analysis especially shaped the social commentary
cultural criticism of the 1950s, in such works as William H. Why
The Organization Man (1956), a study of a white-collar Chicago subur
in which Whyte discussed at length the way church membersh
helped new arrivals gain community acceptance. Indeed, this the
was sometimes pushed to the point of caricature, as evidenc
religious hypocrisy and superficiality. Perhaps for this reason, chur
historians have generally shied away from this part of the sto
leaving it to the sociologists; but it remains important nonethele
A sixth salient feature of American Christianity is its therapeu
dimension. Nearly a century ago that most acute observer of Americ
religion, William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (19
insightfully analyzed religion's practical utility in promoting psycho
logical well-being and alleviating anxiety. These are important g
for the citizens of a Republic whose founding document holds
happiness-or at least the pursuit of happiness-as a natio
entitlement. Without necessarily abandoning the themes of sin,
version, and future blessedness, American Christians have gener
assumed that religion should also promote their happiness and w
being in the present age. Here again the religious innovators, e
cially Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, distilled t
PERSPECTIVES 551
quality of Amer
Meyer has remin
The Positive Thin
attain health and
highlighted a the
Roberts's current
American Protest
minate this conne
This therapeutic
tries and writing
Norman Vincent
psychological hea
hearing the chari
Church, poundin
do all things thr
daily, he proclaim
And this strand
stores are full of
therapeutic cultu
addiction and obe
twelve-step reco
language of the p
Of course, this t
sacred and the pr
thorne to Updik
the 1880s traced his affair with Elizabeth Tilton to his sentiment-
drenched "religion of the heart."19 (Beecher, in a series of tortuou
statements drafted with his lawyers, managed both to acknowledg
and deny the affair. Happily, the progress of civic virtue is such that
we are no longer subjected to such legalistic verbal acrobatics b
ostentatiously pious public figures caught in embarrassing sexual
peccadillos.)
15. Donald B. Meyer, The Positive Thinkers: From Mary Baker Eddy to Ronald Reagan, rev. ed.
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), originally published 1965.
16. For a preview, see Jon H. Roberts, "Psychotherapy," in The Oxford Companion to United
States History, ed. Paul S. Boyer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
17. At the 2000 summer Olympics in Sydney, when Texas diver Laura Wilkinson won the
gold medal, her first words to the world, via NBC-Television, echoed Peale: "I can do
all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (Philippians 4:13).
18. "Christian Bookstores Take a Worldly Lesson," New York Times, 25 July 1996; "Stirring
the Waters of Reflection: How the Anguish of the 1960s Transformed the Role of
Religious Publishing," Publishers Weekly (125th anniversary special issue, July 1997),
73-74.
19. Altina L. Waller, Reverend Beecher and Mrs. Tilton: Sex and Class in Victorian Americ
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982).
552 CHURCH HISTORY
A seventh notable
embrace of the latest
bellum tract societie
printing presses, as d
the word of Christ
Dwight L. Moody in
the later 1990s, Am
nized, efficiently adv
interwar years like
quickly grasped the
niques, just as the
communications sat
Wide Web.20
Religious publishin
corporate enterpris
nation's Christian bookstores-a three billion dollar business that
merits closer study-are as sophisticated about marketing, inven
control, and product placement as any other sector of retail se
Even the fundamentalist Bible prophecy popularizers, who see
new communications technology as laying the groundwork fo
Antichrist, happily in the interim utilize these same technolog
spread their message.
Eighth, American religion-especially Protestantism-is n
worthy for its generally democratic quality. The United States has n
had an established church. Not since the early nineteenth cen
have any citizens paid taxes to support a religious establishme
America's laissez-faire religious marketplace has spawned a dizz
array of innovators and charismatic freelancers, from Joseph S
William Miller, Cyrus Scofield (author of the popular Scofield Refe
Bible, a major purveyor of dispensationalist prophetic belief), M
Baker Eddy, Ellen G. White of the Seventh-day Adventists
Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses to Pat Robers
Jim Jones, Hal Lindsey, Oral Roberts, Jean Carter Stapleton, J
Swaggart, Jim Jones, and David Koresh-and thousands of othe
lesser celebrity. Unsavory or sinister as some of these characters m
be, they collectively represent the genius of American Protes
20. Rather than being touched on parenthetically here, revivalism, so central and distin
in American Christianity from Jonathan Edwards to Billy Graham and beyond,
probably have been treated as a distinct major theme in its own right. My only
for not including it as a separate point is that this would have expanded my list
twelve-certainly a resonant number in Christian history--to the more unwield
inauspicious thirteen.
PERSPECTIVES 553
Christianity, who
its robust vitality.2
A bird's-eye surv
the symbiotic relat
tween the sacred a
"the religious" an
certain purposes
Moore makes clear
gion in the Market
priated and absor
keting techniques
piety and values
have spilled over
openly, sometime
My tenth, and s
history is its mate
1998 biography of
emphasized the s
tholicism, from th
the rituals of bap
Christian Home in
the paintings of J
thousands of evan
trated study of Am
material culture pr
the history and t
Parenthetically, I
influences my par
21. Though less pronoun

quality of innovation
Dorothy Day of the C
Daniel and Philip, who
popularity of St. Jude
across the country. Rob
Saint of Hopeless Caus
End of the World as W
New York University
Mary in New York Ci
22. R. Laurence Moore,
York: Oxford Univers
23. Colleen McDannell, T
Indiana University Pre
Popular Culture in Am
"Imaging Protestant Pie
3 (1993): 29-47; Peter W
United States (Urbana:
554 CHURCH HISTORY
ity, especially of ev
wholesaler of relig
calendars, greetings
sets, letter openers,
verses. I still have o
Fails" pocket knife
Fails"-but on the ot
knife just in case.)
Next, our hypotheti
close attention to a se
local congregation and
public arena. Among h
studies of how specif
grassroots level and
Orsi's deservedly muc
an East Harlem Italian
shows the potential
Tentler's sensitive
work is bound to ill
vitality of American
Bible prophecy belie
reading the books of
where prophetic teac
congregation. In retr
more churches.
But any effort to sum up the key themes of America's religious
history must also address its collective, organized public role. Sociol-
ogist Robert Wuthnow has reminded us in The Restructuring of Amer-
ican Religion of the protean capacity of U.S. religious bodies to create
new organizational structures for influencing the public sphere, and
such historical works as Robert Abzug's Cosmos Crumbling: American
Reform and the Religious Imagination, Anne Loveland's American Evan-
gelicals and the U.S. Military, Ralph Reed's polemic Politically Incorrect:
The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics, and my own When Time
Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture explore
24. Robert A. Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem,
1880-1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); Leslie Woodcock Tentler, "One
Historian's Sunday," in Religious Advocacy and American History, eds. Bruce Kuklick
and D. G. Hart (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1997), 209-20. For one history of
a local congregation-an inner-city mission-see Paul Boyer, Mission on Taylor Street:
The Founding and Early Years of the Dayton Brethren in Christ Mission (Grantham, Pa.: The
Brethren in Christ Historical Society, 1987).
PERSPECTIVES 555
this process in a v
story invites still
be confined to hi
historians, econom
kinds-need to be
religious bodies,
merged assumption
heritage profound
II. INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM: CHRISTIANITY IN CHANGING

AMERICA
Finally, as I suggested at the outset, any understanding of American

Christianity (and, even more, of American Protestant Christianity)
must recognize its status as only one strand-a vitally important
strand, to be sure-in a complex religious tapestry. It particularly
behooves historians of religion to grasp the complexity of the rapidly
evolving contemporary religious scene. "Christianity" broadly de-
fined still enjoys numerical dominance, of course, but the religious
spectrum of late-twentieth-century America differs dramatically from
that of a century ago or even several decades ago. For example, Islam
is poised to overtake Judaism as America's second largest religion,
and interest in Buddhism and New Age mysticism has surged, as
shown for example in the 1990s campus bestseller The Celestine
Prophecy.26 Even the "evangelicalism" of the Christian bookstores and
the burgeoning suburban megachurces-strongly therapeutic, media
savvy, and largely floating free of denominational tethers, with its
Christian movies, rock groups, and TV talk shows and its T-shirts,
bumper stickers, and jewelry emblazoned with religious slogans and
symbols-would be hardly recognizable to the doughty evangelicals
of an earlier age.
25. Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith Since World
War II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Ann Loveland, American Evangeli-
cals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1996); Ralph Reed, Politically Incorrect: The Emerging Faith Factor in American Politics
(Dallas: Word Books, 1994). Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling and Boyer, When Times Shall be
No More cited above. See also James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to
Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
26. James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure (New York: Warner Books, 1993);
Catherine L. Albanese, Nature Religion in America: From the Algonkian Indians to the New
Age (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, A Century
of Islam in America (Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Islamic Affairs, 1986);
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ed., The Muslims of America (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993); Stephen R. Prothero, "Islam," in The Oxford Companion to United States
History, ed. Boyer.
556 CHURCH HISTORY
At this volatile mome

of some church histor
tant tradition, to conf
tianity" causes under
charmed circle. Thus
insightful essays, hard
Religious History, sinc
of Protestantism. Even Robert Wuthnow's valuable but misnamed
1988 study The Restructuring of American Religion focuses exclusivel
not just on Protestantism, but on what used to be called the "mai
stream" liberal denominations. For this reason, Wuthnow's book
stirred sharp criticism when it was discussed in my graduate seminar
at the University of Wisconsin in 1999, a seminar made up of Protes-
tants, Catholics, Jews, a Mormon-and perhaps Buddhists, Wiccans,
Baha'is, and atheists, for all I know.
How American Christianity-and especially the long-dominant
American Protestantism-will adapt to the changing religious demo-
graphics of the present and future remains to be seen. Certainly
today's ferment and volatility guarantees that the study of religion
will retain its appeal-and its importance for understanding the
American experience.
Now that I have done the hard work of outlining what seems to me
to be some of the major themes of two centuries of American religious
history, I do hope someone out there among the readers of Church
History will do the easy part: sit down and write the book. Good luck!

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American Society of Church History

Two Centuries of Christianity in America: An Overview

Two Centuries of Christianity in Amer

Paul Boyer is Merle Curti Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-

? 2001, The American Society of Church History

4. Mattei Gogan, "The De

fact about Americ

10. Leonard J. Arrington and

12. Kenneth Scott Latour

in the 1940s. The Loy

Closely related to religion's role in the shaping of middle-class ident

21. Though less pronoun

II. INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM: CHRISTIANITY IN CHANGING

Finally, as I suggested at the outset, any understanding of American

At this volatile mome

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