Title: Selections from literature of theology and church history in the United States and Canada
Description: The Revolutionary era, Sydney Ahlstrom tells us, was a period of decline for Christianity in the nascent United States. Opposing armies and combat dispersed clerics and congregations alike. Revolutionary political thought stimulated enthusiasm for Enlightenment philosophy, natural theology, rationalism, and secularism (pp. 364-365). A growing consensus about the need to separate church and state disrupted traditional church organizations. The Church of England, for example, would never recover its authority in the United States, even as it continued to hold a prominent position in English Canada, along with the Roman Catholicism of French Canadians. In addition, Ahlstrom argues, political questions in the new United States demanded much energy that had previously been devoted to religious issues. At the same time, the disruption of the status quo gave rise to a new religious freedom. Groupings that had been reform movements inside the Anglican Church reorganized as independent formations. What Ahlstrom calls "monarchical" institutions began to give way to more democratic forms of organization--lay representation and elected bishops (p. 370)--and a new ecumenicalism, known as "denominationalism," came to prevail (p. 381). The new forms of organization relied heavily on the voluntary contributions of active laypeople. Voluntaryism was expressed in interdenominational reform associations made possible by the new religious tolerance. By 1800 the nonhierarchical, voluntary, and reform spirit was dramatically manifest in the phenomenon known as the Second Great Awakening, which is said to have taken off with revival camp meetings in 1800 and 1801 in the frontier settlements of Kentucky. Thereafter, religious revivalism was a widespread feature of nineteenth-century Protestantism. What historians have dubbed the Evangelical United Front led the way with revival preaching but channeled religious energy into missionary and reform campaigns of extraordinary power. These included, over the course of the nineteenth century, missions to Native Americans and the ever-changing frontier and efforts around dueling, pauperism, temperance, Sabbath-keeping, suffrage, and slavery. At times they united denominations in the distribution of the Bible or the establishment of Sunday schools. At other times, these voluntary associations engaged in campaigns against Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. Reform efforts sometimes involved the creation of utopian communities, such as the Millennial Church, better known as the Shakers. The ferment also created quite a bit of space for new sects and individual prophets and prophetesses.
Subjects: Church history, Theology
Places: United States, Canada